Broughton St Marys Parish Church
12 Bellevue Cres, Edinburgh
14 reviews
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Tuesday, 23 May 2023
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Monday, 22 May 2023
QUEER DIVINITY
Marcella Althaus-Reid
This is another excerpt from my book (in preparation) Lavender Rising: An Intersectional History of the Queer Struggle.
CORRECTIONS COMMENTS OR SUGGESTED ADDITIONS WOULD BE VERY WELCOME
Applied Divinity
The queer theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid (1952 -2009) sparked controversy with the books Indecent Theology and The Queer God (K. Cherry, 2023). She is famous for writing, in the year 2000, that ‘All theology is sexual theology’.
Althaus-Reid earned her first theological degree in Buenos Aires from ISEDET (Instituto Superior Evangelico de Estudios Teologicos). ISEDET is Latin America’s renowned centre for studying liberation theology, which emphasizes God’s “preferential option for the poor’. Althaus-Reid worked among the poor and the vulnerable, and in queer communities,.
In 2006, Marcella Althuis-Reid became the first woman to be appointed to a Chair of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. She was a member of the advisory theological team in Metropolitan Community Churches and felt at home in MCC’s Edinburgh congregation, although she was formally a member of the Quakers and the Church of Scotland (COS). She wanted us to free ourselves from dominating constructs that keep us from knowing God... the goal is not to formulate one theology but to celebrate the diverse ways of knowing God.
While largely inflexible, Roman Catholicism concedes via its concept of successive divine revelation that ‘correct’ Christian teachings can evolve from century to century. The Holy Trinitarian Scriptures should not be regarded as inerrant, and for our neo-Calvinists and crass Evangelical Free’s to do so risks contextualising ‘what is right at the moment’ in the wrongs of the past.
Despite all the limp-wristed ‘clobberings’ from the pompous diehards, e.g. their crassly simplistic interpretations of the Creation Accounts and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, I see nothing in the Old or New Testaments to say that queer people aren't as acceptable to God as anybody else. The Creation Accounts are consistent with ‘Adam, Lilith and Eve’ and their relatives appearing in Eden from out of Africa and should be re-interpreted as such. See Schaffner (2022).
Tom’s Churches
My experiences in the institutionally corrupt Church of England, a much-less-than-Christian Evangelical Free Church in Madison, Wisconsin, the all-enlightening Integrity/Dignity of Madison, the profit-seeking, all-accepting Old St. Paul’s Scottish Episcopal Church in Old Town, Edinburgh, the back-sliding South Edinburgh Quakers of Morningside, two contrasting churches in the neo-Calvinist COS, in New Town and Broughton, and the liberal-theologically enlightening St. Augustine’s United Reform Church on George IV bridge will all contribute to the content of this book.
Palm and Easter Sunday in the COS
A long-serving, gay and trans accepting COS elder from another parish advised me on Palm Sunday 2023 to the effect that COS is in a desperate, myopic, struggle for financial profit and self-survival due to decreasing congregation sizes, and in the meantime only gives token assistance to the population at large. He also told me that his minister had declined to celebrate gay marriages ‘simply because he (the minister) didn’t want to’.
Kittredge Cherry (2023).Marcella Althaus-Reid: Queer theology pioneer (Qspirit)
https://qspirit.net/marcella-althaus-reid-queer-theology/ Accessed 19 May 2023
Stephen Shaffner (2022) What Genetics say about Adam and Eve (Biologos)
https://biologos.org/articles/what-genetics-say-about-adam-and-eve Accessed 12 March 2023.
Friday, 19 May 2023
CHINESE INFLUENCE IN LATIN AMERICA IS A SIGN OF GLOBAL INTEGRATION
GROWING CHINESE PRESENCE IN THE AMAZON IS A SIGN OF GLOBAL INTEGRATION
(Mauricio Santoro)
CHINA'S GROWING INFLUENCE IN LATIN AMERICA
China is South America's Top Trading Partner
ALEKSANDRA DLUSKA'S MASTERS THESIS (2020)
EXTRACTS
The way China is framed in the US media is dealt with in a considerable number of studies. The studies on US newspapers’ coverage of China bear out similarities between the depiction of China and the state of Sino-American relations. Moreover, the predominant tone in the coverage of China presents the country in a negative light (Chang 1989, Peng 2004). Turner (2014) writes that the images of China in the American imagery from the eighteenth century depicted China as exotic and mythical land. But aside from the idealized image of the Asian country, Americans portrayed it as backward and inferior to the West. In the contemporary American political discourse, the rise of China in the 21st century further stirred hopes of its potential to conform to American values of trade liberalization, but also build ups the notion of the country as threatening the Western dominance and the US security
China’s growing attention towards strengthening economic relations with countries in the Global South at the end of the 20th century coincided with a downward trend of the US’s stake in the region (Li 2007). The demise of the US’s agenda on maintaining Latin America as its ‘backyard’ and the sphere of influence was announced in the then Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on the end of the Monroe Doctrine in 2013 (Johnson 2013). One conspicuous instance of transformation in the balance of political and economic power in the region, is the turn made by Panama, a country with a historic US influence in the past century, towards strengthening its relations with China while singing 19 cooperation agreements and joining the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (Giolzetti 2019). Almost 20 years after the US ceded control of the Panama Canal in 2000, the canal of a geostrategic importance may supply the massive China-led infrastructure project with the access to a logistic center for both North and South Americas (Hsiang 2018)
In the history of the United States and Europe, China has been depicted in the popular culture as exotic but also fearful ‘Yellow Peril’ (Mawdsley 2008). As it was touched upon in the previous section, since the formation of the People’s Republic of China, the ‘Red Scare’ denoted the Cold War animosity of the US media towards the Communist country. Later, the ‘opening up’ of China and the promise of capitalist reforms were seen as a In the contemporary US foreign policy, it is the emergence of China as a competing economic power to the US, that underpins the perception of ‘China as a threat’ (Pan 2004). Some argue that, it is in fact the US’s self-imagination that is projected on to the US-China relationship (Jespersen 1996, Pan 2004). The history of depiction of China’s images in the US is summarized by Turner (2014) as “Idealised, Opportunity, Uncivilised and Threatening”. As the focus of the thesis is the period of President Obama and President Trump’s administration, this section proceeds to examine the official rhetoric of the White House towards China during the years 2009-2016 and 2017-2019, respectively.
Based on the recurring themes, I suggest that the two elite newspapers delivered the “interpretation package” of China’s activities in the Amazon through three prevalent frames in the period of examined coverage: the US as a displaced power, China as unscrupulous and Latin America as vulnerable. The findings in this analysis, support the arguments of the negative bias in the US media coverage on China (Chang 1989, Peng 2004) and point out similarities in the depiction of Latin America to Mawsdley’s (2008) argument of the UK newspapers portrayal of Africa and Africans as weak and vulnerable in relation to China.
While reading the majority of the articles, one could pose a question whether the American or Western companies were ever present in the Amazon. Given the definition of a frame by Entman (1993), what was bypassed or downgraded in its significance in the reporting, is also regarded as a part of the frame. Hence, with no reference or comparison to other foreign companies, the information delivered by the media might suggest that either Chinese companies are the only investor coming to profit from the Amazon jungle or, perhaps, it is only China that brings in the all the detrimental ventures to Latin American countries and the rainforest. For instance, in The NYT op-ed, China appears to be the solely responsible actor for generating pollution in Latin America (Galzon and Salazar-Lopez 2017). In the same newspaper, one article, while mentioning the infamous ‘Devil’s Railway’ or Madeira-Mamoré Railroad as the example of a failed project in Brazil that claimed thousands of workers’ lives and China’s plans to follow that path, did not include an indication of American connection to the venture (Romero 2015a).
Friday, 12 May 2023
FODDERTY STANDING STONES
The iron protection bar described in 1943 has been gone a long time, the stone now appears to be in a builder's backyard.
We parked at Milnain on the A834, clambered through a wood and jumped a stream to reach fields a short distance north from the road. From there we had the easy walk to the first of the Fodderty Standing Stones.
It sits at 1.6m high and stands all by itself except for the assorted building
materials.
Strathpeffer Biography
The Great Hero of the Gaels was Finn mac Coul, Fingal of the tales of Ossian. That the old fort would provide a suitable abode for mac Coul’s heroic companions was obvious, and fertile imaginations would use other local features in adapting old tales and inventing new ones. For instance, the great standing stones in the valley had to be explained. So stories readily came to lips of how the ancient warriors used to engage in trials of strength, tossing rocks over the Strath. But even in those days it sometimes happened that the weather spoiled people’s sport, and when the footholds were slippery the stones, instead of clearing the valley, landed deep in the hollow. Look, there are the finger-and-thumb marks of the giants on that stone to this day!
The Great Hero of the Gaels was Finn mac Coul, Fingal of the tales of Ossian. That the old fort would provide a suitable abode for mac Coul’s heroic companions was obvious, and fertile imaginations would use other local features in adapting old tales and inventing new ones. For instance, the great standing stones in the valley had to be explained. So stories readily came to lips of how the ancient warriors used to engage in trials of strength, tossing rocks over the Strath. But even in those days it sometimes happened that the weather spoiled people’s sport, and when the footholds were slippery the stones, instead of clearing the valley, landed deep in the hollow. Look, there are the finger-and-thumb marks of the giants on that stone to this day!
Monday, 8 May 2023
MY DRONED-UP CORONATION WEEK-END
During the hyped-and-droned-up Coronation weekend in May 2023, I attended St. Augustine’s United Church on George 1V bridge. On 7 May 2023, Rev. Fiona Bennett, the anti-monarchist moderator of the UK United Reformed Church, preached a refreshing brand of living Christianity, the Church Secretary told me all about ‘Our Tribe’, St. Augustine’s social group for LGBTQI+people (see also sections 6.15 and 6.16), and everybody was reassuring welcomingly to the LGB, the T, and the QI+ without any pinkwashing or transwashing or queerwashing in sight. When I watched the Coronation Concert from Windsor Castle in the evening, it seemed as if Charles the Third was planning to assume the unelected politic leadership of the much-exploited Commonwealth, and even the entire much-exploited world.
The King wants to preserve nature
So do I!
But here is one guy who King Charles patronises:
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH, NEGATIVE EUGENICIST
Sir David Attenborough is officially the most trusted man in Britain, but his remarks in the context of the debate over world population growth, that it is “barmy” to send food to famine-stricken countries, is crass in its callousness; it is simply stupid.
TELEGRAPH: HUMAN BEINGS ARE A PLAGUE ON EARTH
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