The “Spirit of Life” fair that the Church of England’s Manchester Cathedral is running on May 2 has put up a “provisional programme” of events, exhibitors and so on. Among the stalls will be:
Two Church Mice: Cards, gemstones, saints, and healing.
Penny Horsemen: Jesus Deck readings.
Celtic Springs: Christian travellers in the New Age. Jesus Deck and Christian creation cards.
Among the workshops will be:
Healing Serpent (Pauline Warner): Looking for inspiration in the Old Testament bible stories about M oses and Aaron in Egypt, we find that the God of Moses was the Great Serpent, the Protector and Deliverer.
Angelic Encounters (John and Olive Drane): Angels are all around us, if only weareopentotheir presence.
Christianity and the Goddess (Steve Hollinghurst): Exploring the relationship between the Goddess and Christian tradition to uncover the divine feminine in Christianity.
So is there really any doubt about what is going on there?
March 30, 2011 at 5:40 pm
You called this right. (Not that there was any doubt.) But seriously goddess worhsip and Christianity? Oh no, there’s nothing at all problematic there …
But here again, I just don’t get how people interpret Scripture anc come to the inane conclusions they seem to. How is it possible to read Numbers and see the brass serpent as the “God of Moses”? It simply isn’t – any more than the golden calf was the “god” who delivered the Israelites out of Egypt. In fact, we read in 2 Kings about Hezekiah breaking in pieces the bronze snake because the people were worshipping it – calling it Nehushtan.
Or maybe she means to indicate the fact that Jesus compared his crucifixion to “Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness”. Again, pretending this somehow makes Jesus the great serpent doesn’t work as any possible interpretation of the text.
March 30, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Unless you think of the text as similar to a putty nose.
March 30, 2011 at 7:41 pm
Jeremiah 2:13 comes immediately to mind.
March 30, 2011 at 9:11 pm
Agreed.
But it’s almost as though something interferes with their ability to think at all. As if when they exposit Scripture you feel cognitive abilities slipping away.