Sign of the times? This morning the Globe and Mail reported that the Anglican Church of Canada will seek corporate sponsorship, including visible advertising space, for it's national meeting called the synod. Here are a few lines from the article:It’s the first time in its 117-year history that the Canadian church made its governing synod available for a mess of pottage - to use the language of the Bible’s Old Testament allusion to Esau selling his birthright for a lentil stew. For that matter, no other Canadian church is known to have sold advertising at its formal gatherings and access to its leaders.
This amazes me, although our United Church conferences and general council usually meet in arenas where we too could plaster the boards with ads. This proposal strikes me as an act of desperation. The Anglican church is declining faster than any other denomination in Canada (we sure have nothing to be smug about in the UCC.) And what if a major corporation offered to foot the bill for the whole shebang but its practices and goals were contrary to those of the church and the gospel?
At least it got the Anglicans on the front page of a national newspaper.
What do you think of this initiative? Should we be selling ad space on the St. Paul's steeple?
3 comments:
While watching a Leaf game this season, I noticed a blank spot on the boards where St Paul's could be advertised..right in between the Viagra and the Pepsi ads.
I see it as selling out. In the United Church, we talk a lot about living in the midst of Empire. I cannot imagine going to a church conference and having advertisements surround me with messages of "buy, buy, buy if you want to be happy," while attempting to come before God and encounter the Spirit. It's a scary thought that some churches are so scared of closing their doors that they are willing to welcome in these messages.
I'm a baptised and confirmed Anglican, but that said, it's not surprising that Anglicanism is on the wane!
For today's young,low attention span, touchy-feely free-style church families, the Anglican routine of sticking to the scripture and "in, sit, up, down, up, and out" are just too dry and old school.
Johnny ... great quip. Just about fell off my chair laughing. What a sequence: phalluses, Paul's Place and pop.
Zing!
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