Rod Dreher, aka Crunchy Con, featured blogger for Beliefnet, doesn't like clowning clergy . Well...a lot of people don't, including me. I'm sorry, but if I knew an upcoming service at my church was going to be a clown service, I'd probably drive 50 miles down the road to the nearest high-up-the-candle Episcopal parish. I just don't like clowns; with the exception of Krusty the Clown, they've creeped me out ever since I was little and watched The Greatest Show on Earth. So while I find Dreher's hyperbolic anti-clown rant a little over the top -- evidently he not only dislikes clown clergy but wishes the ones from the Woodstock generation would die off quickly (I always find it droll when self-appointed guardians of traditional family values respond to people they don't like by wanting to kill them) -- I am not entirely unsympathetic to his sentiments.
On the other hand...down in the comment section, someone bearing the screen name "Ignorant Redneck" suggests that clowns are -- get this -- a gay plot. All the clowing clergy he's ever encountered, he says, are flamboyantly, aggressively gay.
You know -- after awhile you get used to being blamed for STDs, for the breakdown of the nuke-u-lur family, for the decay of morality in the arts and entertainment...but for cripe's sake, do the haters have to blame us for clown worship services too? Is there nothing they won't blame upon the gay community?
9 comments:
Is there nothing they won't blame upon the gay community?
If the sun comes up tomorrow, I'm sure there's someone, somewhere, blaming a gay person.
(I was actually going to say something like, "an increase in the birth rate", but then I was all, "No, artificial insemination and adoption..." then I was all, "Increase in the divorce rate... wait, no... I've got nothing.")
No, because there is not logic in haters, and no grace either. There, I said it. Oops, not.
Bwahhhhhh!! I almost spit my iced coffee out all over the screen! Clown ministers get about as much respect from me as the mime panhandlers outside of the Metropolitan Museum who mimic all the passersby. I have been tempted to ask them to go mimic someone run over by a bus. But a GAY PLOT? Bwahh ha ha !! That must be the infamous gay agenda everyone talks about -- to secretly put a clown in as president. Oh wait, someone already did that !
Sadly, Ignorant Redneck has opinions - however misguided they are. People are always going to have ignorant opinions.
You gotta get off the "nobody-likes-me-everybody-hates-me" train, LC.
DOH
Surely the gay clown comment was meant as parody. The person referred to themselves as "ignorant redneck?"
On the other hand, it is more fun and convenient to blame gays for everything. ;)
"it is more fun and convenient to blame gays for everything. ;) "
Just as it is more fun and convenient to blame all straight people for all injustice.
Lumping everyone into categories of either "us" or "them" (no matter how counterproductive it is for the church) is a ball, don't you think?
DOH
I have had a few nasty encounters with him when he ranted on the evils of gay marriage. I seem to remember that he's quite a denomination jumper - from fundamentalism, to Roman Catholicism and more recently to Eastern Orthodoxy, each accompanies with loud denunciations of his prior denominiation.
Consider the source.
Isn't this an outrage in search of a reason? I heard of the one-time service at Trinity Wall Street but it's not like this is a fixture at the local church (innit?)
Dan
DOH, my comment was not meant to be taken seriously. That's what the little wink was for. Sorry for any misunderstanding.
I didn't misunderstand, but I was serious in my comment.
That we choose by our words to further division in the church (this comes from BOTH sides) is ridiculous and wrong - like somehow we will make things all better by blaming anyone but ourselves for these divisions.
Sadly, we reap what we sow.
DOH
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