Orthodixie

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh —

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Anticipating groans & begging forgiveness in advance …

After forty years of shaving himself every morning, a man in a small Southern town decided he’d had enough. He told his wife that he intended to let the local barber shave him from now on.

He went to the shop, which was owned by the pastor of their Baptist church. The barber’s wife, Grace, was working that day so she performed the task.

Grace shaved him, sprayed him with lilac water and said “That will be $20.” The man thought it a bit high, but paid the bill and went to work.

The next morning he looked in the mirror and his face was as smooth as it had been when he left the barbershop the day before. “Not bad,” he thought. “At least I don’t need to get a shave every day.

The next morning the man’s face was still smooth. Two weeks later, still smooth. It was more than he could take, so he returned to the barbershop.

“I thought $20 was high for a shave,” he told the Baptist-barber-preacher’s wife. “But you must have done a great job. It’s been two weeks and my whiskers still haven’t grown back.”

“Of course they haven’t” she replied. “You were shaved by Grace. Once shaved, always shaved.”

Thanks to blog reg, Keith.

Yes, it’s in the religion section on eBay.

From the New Yorker:

Joan Acocella traces the growth of the Mary Magdalene myth—neither the Bible nor current Catholic doctrine identify her as a prostitute. According to gnostic texts discovered last century, she was Jesus’ chief disciple. The fallen Magdalene we know may be a result of successful doctrinal warfare waged by the Orthodox Church against competing Christian sects.

HT Slate

Huh? That, I must admit, is the dumbest thing I’ve read in a while. Can someone, perhaps having read the article, enlighten me?

Here’s DV on the DVC …

The main purpose of this anti-Christian sub-plot in [The Da Vinci Code] is twofold … [Dan Brown] wants to make the case for a revival of paganism, which embraces the “sacred feminine” and is superior to Christianity, seen as male-dominated and hierarchical.

Now the “sacred feminine” is not unfamiliar to Episcopalians, many of whose ultra-feminist priests have also embraced it as part of the ECUSA new religion. The New Age movement has been incorporated into the Episcopal Church. “This is a call from the Mother Earth and the Sacred Feminine to bring the feminine principle into consciousness and create a critical mass, a tipping point–the metaphoric millionth circle,” wrote one Episcopal feminist. Other New Age supporters the Very Rev. James Parks Morton, formerly the Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and now President of the Temple of Understanding. While at St. John the Divine, Morton said, “The language of the ‘Sacred Earth’ has got to become mainline.” Morton acted on this belief by holding a St. Francis Day communion service in 1993 that invoked the gods Yemanja, Ra, Ausar, and Obatala; the celebrant was Episcopal Bishop of New York Richard Grein.

The tragedy of books like The Da Vinci Code is not so much their error as their persuasiveness. Men and women are being lured into believing a lie, the ancient Gnostic lie which h the early church fought so tenaciously to suppress. Brown is offering men and women a spirituality that does not work. He is proffering sex and “the Force” instead of relationship with a transcendent Lord. People are being sold a lie that will never provide the satisfaction for which they hunger and thirst.

More.

A while back I posted notice of an Orthodox book on the Female Deaconate. I’m not an avid Blog Comment reader; perhaps others share this laxity, but here’s a comment [in progress] from an “Orthodox Female Seminarian” that warrants a read:

… Whenever this issue comes up so many people jump on the bandwagon of the fallacy of Slippery Slope its just annoying. I have read this book thoroughly, and while she, yes, asks for women to be ordained, she never asks for them to be ordained *Priests*, or *Bishops* or anything. Let’s us all remember for a moment that we are *Orthodox* Christians, NOT Episcopalians, we have varying orders of ordinations, and our priests (unlike the Episcopalians) have fully sacramental functions and are not simply social workers who give a self-help talk every Sunday (which women can and do do in our church anyways, so if the Episcopalians want to call the women who do that in their church “priests” then fine, whatever). And we are definitely not Catholics either (where their messed up ecclesiology pratically demands that every ordained person is nothing more than a defective pope, and hence one ordinations DOES equal another). So let’s all think rationally about this for a moment, for goodness sakes.

The whole comment may be found in the Comments on the original post (hyper-linked above).

I bring this [back] to your attention because, well, I disagree all the more. The Holy Spirit allows certain practices to die out. The Kiss of Peace? It used to be on the lips. The thing is, it was between priests & priests, deacons & deacons, males & males, females & females. This practice died out due to abuse. I don’t believe this is the time to bring back certain practices — especially deaconesses.

What need is there? Why is anyone even talking about it? Is the Church, the Body of Christ, groaning for this lost ministry? Or is there something else, less divine, going on? Sane replies, minus hubris and hysteria appreciated.