Non angli sed angeli =Not angels but anglicans?

I will eventually get round to fisking this for the difficult points- mike

hotcopied , but with the the kind permission of the archdruid?

http://cyber-coenobites.blogspot.com.es/2012/03/guide-to-english-christianity.html

TUESDAY, 27 MARCH 2012

A Guide to English Christianity

Announced by Archdruid Eileen

I'd like to thank Anonymous for his/her contributions to this site over the last couple of days. It's really opened my eyes up to how Americans do (or probably don't) think about us over on this side of a pond.

So I'd like to try to explain how church life works over here. To assist me, I'll be able to call on my considerable amount of experience of American religion, having been to two services in the States. One was in a little church in the communal hall of a trailer-park, and was notable for being small, welcoming, and not unlike some URC churches in the UK. The other was a giant Southern Baptist church, whose congregation was bigger than the population of the average British town. The pastor did not endear himself to me, by first telling his congregation that England is a terribly ungodly place, and then when saying "goodbye" at the door asking if I was "a Britisher". Sadly I was on holiday, and open-toed sandals are poor footwear in these circumstances. But fortunately the congregation was so large, I was able to nip down the road to a mall, buy a pair of steel-toe-capped boots, go back to the church and kick him in the shins before he'd finished saying goodbye to the congregation. Truly, it is a land of opportunity. You can achieve anything you want, given sufficient money and energy.

Geography

I realise that some friends from across the Pond have trouble understanding our geography, so to help you understand - "Europe" is a small group of countries on the western fringe of Asia, and to the south-east of England. "London" is a part of England but not all of it - only in London are there red buses, bobbies on bicycles two-by-two, chimney sweeps, flying nannies and people driving around in minis. There are other parts of England - for example, Liverpool, Birmingham or Scotland - where this kind of thing doesn't happen at all.

The words "Britain" and "England" are used synonymously. There is no difference, and those parts of Britain that believe they are not part of England (eg Wales and Scotland) are just deluded. I'm not going to mention Ireland as that just makes people get upset. Suffice it say that none of Ireland is part of England.

I'm also not going to mention Welsh church-going (as few do) or the Scottish variety. Except to say that in some Scottish churches, all pleasure is banned. The official Strict Kirk (Free Independent Presbyterian) Bible has the word "joy" replaced throughout by the words "strict rectitude and quiet and appropriate self-examination".

Church Politics

In America, it seems to me, you can tell politicians apart by the age at which baptism takes place. Broadly, I reckon, Democrats baptise children and Republicans baptise adults.

In England, a good rule of thumb is as follows. A lay member of the Church is likely to be a Conservative or a Liberal Democrat. Whereas a member of the clergy will be either a Labour Supporter or a Liberal Democrat. You can tell the Liberal Democrats of both orders apart these days. They're the bitter, disappointed ones.

Church and State

It's important to remember that the key difference between the church in the US and in England is its relationship to power. In the US, there is no relationship between the church and state, and the church is therefore politically quite powerful. The Church of England actually has a number of seats in the House of Lords (our equivalent of the Senate), while the Governor of the Church of England is the Queen. In any other country, this would give the Church quite unfair advantages in the way of political power. But in England, with our fear of boasting and natural love of the underdog, it's quite the opposite. The Church of England has no effective power at all, and its natural diffidence means that even "church schools" will have almost no tendency to cause their scholars to grow up as Anglicans. It's much the same way that we don't really have "mega-churches". Why have a church where you can boast about the size of the congregation, rather than one where you can complain it's so cold that the water in the font has frozen?

If you weren't English, you might think there was something odd in the idea that the Archbishop of Canterbury (i.e. the Primate of England) crowns the King or Queen of the United Kingdom. But then I'm not, so I'll go with it.

"A Christian Country"

Nope, not no more. Not if ever.

"Becoming an Islamic State"

No, not that either.

"Over-run by the forces of political correctness".

No, nor that.

The Church of England

As the Established religion, the Church of England has the responsibility to spend its historical assets on the upkeep of buildings that people never visit. Historically a via media, the "good old C of E" holds in tension two very different groups of people - the ones who expect to attend Communion at 8am on Sundays, and the vicar, who doesn't see why they can't turn up at 10 o'clock like everyone else.

Many Church of England (also "Anglican") buildings have a royal coat of arms on the wall. This is a reminder that after we rejected the dictatorship of the Pope at the Reformation, we were quite clear who was the One who the Church had to obey. No, not God - that other bunch, just below him with posher voices. These days, of course, the Queen has no more power in England than anyone else. That's because, since she doesn't carry cash, she never has £250K in readies handy, which is what power costs these days.

In reality, ultimate power in the average parish church is wielded by a shadowy group of Illuminati called "The Choir". They decide what music can be sung, which century the liturgy should come from, and when it's time for the vicar to call it a day and go somewhere else. The Church Wardens have important responsibilities in road repair and painting walls, and are issued with long sticks called "wands". These wands are rubbish, incapable of even the simplest expeliamus incantantion when the sermon's gone over ten minutes. Although they have pointy ends which can be handy in hooking flying bishops and bringing them down to earth.

The other key groups in a Church of England church are the "bellringers" and "flower-arrangers". These people, like the "little folk" of tradition are never seen - it is said that they slip out just before the first worshipper arrives - although some claim the bellringers can be found in the public bar of the local pub on practice nights. And every other night.

It is a myth that English vicars drink only tea. They drink only gin.

Orthodoxy

Some Anglicans, of the tea lights-and-pebbles variety, quite like icons. These are not to be confused with real Orthodox, who go through interminable liturgy because they think that's right, and because it's pleasing to God, and not because they think it is in some way "ethnic".


Catholics

English Catholics are frequently Irish, although some of them are Italian or Polish. A few of them are English. If you meet a married Catholic priest in England, he's likely a Church of England bishop.


Non-conformists

Non-conformity was an 18th Century English religion dedicated to the building of ugly red-brick chapels, on the grounds that religion wasn't meant to be pleasant. They are called "non-conformists" because historically they wouldn't do what they were told.They vary from some Methodists, who are so "high" they are nearly Anglicans, to fire-breathing fundamentalists who are so (King James) Bible-believing that they are constantly on the lookout for unicorns.

Today, most non-conformists are very nice, and largely undistinguishable from the more Protestant members of the Church of England - except for being lumbered with those red-brick chapels.

Church Coffee

Since some Anglican churches are also ugly and made from red-brick, and some non-conformist buildings are actually quite nice - and some non-conformists also use stoles and other "liturgical" apparatus - you need a more reliable way of distinguishing them. I recommend waiting until after the service. If you find you are drinking bad instant coffee from a green "Beryl" or other Woodsware cup, you are in a non-conformist chapel. If you're drinking bad instant coffee from a chipped bone-china cup, you'll be with the Church of England today. If you've unexpectedly been given a pint of Guinness, you'll have wandered into a Catholic church.

Emotion

The English don't do this. We're talking about a nation that responded to the fire-bombing of its capital by bemoaning the lack of tea-making facilities in the Tube stations.

The English are capable of singing the most emotionally heart-rending words, to the most stirring tune imaginable, while preserving a demeanour that resembles Buster Keaton having a boring day. Emotion in religion is regarded with the utmost suspicion.

If the English discover that one of their own is showing inappropriate emotion, they put them on a ship to America. A person incapable of keeping all emotions completely to themselves is known as a Winslet.

There are a couple of exceptions to the "no emotions" rule. An Englishman is allowed to laugh, cry, sing and show all emotions between despair and elation, openly and freely - provided he is watching a game of football. At weddings, the bride's mother is allowed to cry. Although it's regarded as bad form if the bridegroom does.

Update Cultural note:Australia, aka Oz , aka Down under: there's more than just Crocodile Dundee and kangaroos.

Here are two different videos of a famous popsong, wellknown(aurally) in Spain, with the lyrics:
The song reflects the reality of Australian isolation and their gypsyish wanderings around the world. In this case hippytype wanderings.There are only about 20 million of them, but you can find- and they themselves can meet - one or two of them absolutely everywhere. Non-Anglosphere people include them with Americans and British, among whom, a bit lonely, they can live and communicate, but their warmth- as in these videos-is for meeting someone from home. You should find it easy to understand after one or two times.Notice the Koala bear plushie.(=soft toy). Notice how "you'd better"softens to you better the second time. Can you guess what the song implies is happening to the "singer"?

• Combie, same as in Spanish.
• fried-out= a variation of worn-out
• to take in has many meanings, here it = acojer
• vegemite is the same as English marmite, a wierd(to non brits or nonAussies) meaty- tasting salty vegetarian spread made from the yeast used to brew beer. Utterly characteristic. US military insultingly refer to Brits as "marmite- eaters", to Aussies as "Vegemite-eaters"
• chunder:Oz slang: originally= to vomit, but it ,as here, has masculine/lad , connotations, what in Australia used to be meant by "beery": sport+outdoors+men together+beer, etc
• den= where certain animals( eg bears, badgers,lions etc) live-> a specific room for the man of the house(and his male friends)/an opium den = a house where opium is smoked in Asia./ a den of thieves/etc

Travelling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said,

Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You'd better run, you better take cover.

Buying bread from a man in Brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, do you speak-a my language?
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
And he said,

I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?

You'd better run, you better take cover.

Lying in a den in Bombay
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
I said to the man, are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty?
And he said,

Oh! Do you come from a land down under? (oh yeah yeah)
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You'd better run, you better take cover

Travelogue version w/s/t
Here is Mark Steyn with the "backstory" of what has become an emblematic song for Australia:

My sell-out Oz tour 2012 came to a close with my stop in Adelaide, for a rollicking good time on the ABC's Q&A and a final Free Speech gig for the IPA where I was introduced by Isobel Redmond, the Leader of the Opposition in the South Australia parliament, and thanked by Senator Cory Bernardi, both of whom are great warriors for sanity in Aussie politics. It was a great tour - standing room only in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, and a few moments in between to catch up with old friends like John Howard and Alexander Downer. We've posted a few pictures over at the SteynOnline Facebook page, and we'll dig out some more in the days ahead. In the meantime, here's the last of our Aussie encores from the Song of the Week archives - the Number One record on Australia Day 30 years ago, and a song we couldn't leave out:

Do you come from a land Down Under
Where women glow and men plunder?

Good question. Men At Work came from a land Down Under and in January 1983 they were on top of the world: "Down Under" was Number One not only in Oz but also in the United Kingdom and in the United States, and to this day Men At Work are the only Australian band to have topped simultaneously both the British and American singles and albums charts. A lot of the pop songs from that period you'll still hear on the Eighties oldies stations: in America, Men At Work were succeeded at the top of the Hot One Hundred by Toto and "Africa", which is pleasant enough in a bland sort of way; and in Britain they made way in the Number One slot for Kajagoogoo and "Too Shy", and gosh, it's years since my fingers have had cause to type the word "Kajagoogoo" and even then it was as a punchline for a cheap gag. But "Down Under" transcended the passing fancies of the hit parade and has become an Australian anthem. There have been other international Oz hits, of course, notably Rolf Harris' classic recording of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" - and, as we always have to point out whenever the subject arises, a truly great novelty song like "Tie Me Kangaroo" should never be confused with a truly atrocious one like Charlie Drake's "My Boomerang Won't Come Back".

But "Down Under" has become a kind of musical shorthand for contemporary Australia - you'll recall it was used on theKangaroo Jack soundtrack, the trailer for Finding Nemo, etc - in part because of its most famous couplet:

I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich

- which is a truly atrocious rhyme but, at least for a while, did wonders for Vegemite sales in the northern hemisphere. I can't speak for Aussies but I think what the rest of the world likes about the song is that it captures Australians as most of us first encounter them - the backpacking globetrotter in a bar in Earl's Court, or Dublin, or Hong Kong, or Vancouver or Delhi or a thousand other spots. I did my share of traveling in my youth and, like a lot of folks, I was always glad to find myself on a barstool next to an Australian: wherever you're from, they never seem that foreign to you, if you know what I mean. And, if you don't, well, see for yourself. They're out there, all over the map:

Traveling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said:

Do you come from a land Down Under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover...

The song was born in ten green bottles, more or less. Ron Strykert, the guitarist of Men At Work, was at home and at a loose end and decided, as one does, to fill various wine and beer bottles with different amounts of water and then give 'em a thwack and see what kind of tune emerges. That's the origin of the opening of "Down Under". Next up came the chorus. In 1978, two years before the first record of the song was released, Strykert's fellow band member Colin Hay was out in the car, when the muse descended. He was driving down Power Street in Hawthorn in the Melbourne suburbs, when "it just popped into my head". The verses popped up a day or so later, all in about half an hour.

Hay was the only band member not to come, originally, from a land down under. He was born in Scotland and his family emigrated to Australia when he was 14, so he brought to the song not just a genuine love for his new home but also an ability to see what it was about "the lucky country" that so tickled the outside world. If the chorus is almost ingenious in its simplicity (how come no-one ever cottoned on to "Down Under" as a song title before?), the linking quatrains give the piece a structure and a story. "The verses were more the Barry McKenzie aspect of the song," Hay recalled, referring to Barry Humphries' popular cartoon strip in Private Eye in the Sixties, "and that thing where it's almost a rite of passage for young Australians to travel through Asia and India, and go back to find out where their families come from in England or Ireland or Scotland":

Lying in a den in Bombay
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
I said to the man, "Are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty?"
And he said...

'Tempt me"/"plenty"? Nobody turns to rock for pure rhymes or for Cole Porter literacy. Nonetheless, even Eighties pop needs a little linguistic distinction. Simon Climie once told me about writing "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)", which eventually was a Number One for Aretha Franklin and George Michael. As originally conceived, it ran:

When the river was deep
I wasn't worried....

He chanced to run it past our mutual friend Don Black, writer of "Born Free" and "To Sir With Love" and "Diamonds Are Forever" and much else. And Don said, "'I wasn't worried"s very weak. You need something stronger - like 'I didn't falter'." Well, he was right, and it makes the song: "Falter" is an especially good Aretha word; she infuses it with a real gospel quality that you couldn't wring out of "worried". Colin Hay pulled off something similar in the chorus of "Down Under". What does the title rhyme with? Well, "thunder" you'd expect, but I love this:

Do you come from a land Down Under
Where women glow and men plunder?

That's such a great word for a pop song, and it captures all the buccaneering swagger of Oz. But then the guys manage to better it in the second chorus:

I come from a land Down Under
Where beer does flow and men chunder...

"Chunder"? That's Australian for what men do when the beer flows too readily: vomit. There's all kinds of stories about the origin of the word. It's First World War rhyming slang based on a boot-polish advertising character called Chunder Loo of Akim Foo - ie, "chunder loo"="spew". Alternatively, it's what queasy emigrants to Oz in rough seas used to shout to the chaps on the deck below before they let fly: "Watch under", or "'chunder". That sounds a bit too neat to me, though Barry Humphries, who helped popularize the expression, still subscribes to it. Still, how many Number One songs mention vomiting? And how many manage to rhyme the sentiment? It's that kind of attention to detail that gives "Down Under" its distinctive flavor, so to speak.

As for the Vegemite, that too is drawn from life. Colin Hay had a friend who'd walked into a bakery in Brussels and attempted to order in French. At which point the bloke behind the counter announced he was from Melbourne. Hence:

Buying bread from a man in Brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich...

I have an American friend who has an entire thesis premised on the theory that the British Empire declined because, unlike American boys, it raised its youth on Vegemite and Marmite rather than peanut butter. This isn't the time or place for a scholarly refutation thereof, or for an exploration of the intra-Commonwealth disputes regarding the comparative merits of Marmite and Vegemite. Or even to discuss the alleged banning of Vegemite by US Customs in 2006. The point is Vegemite is as Australian as ...er, Vegemite - even though it's currently owned by Kraft. It's part of the vernacular, for everything from a happy person (a "happy little Vegemite") to a gay person (a "visitor to Vegemite Valley"). That last one comes from another Barry Humphries character - Sir Les Patterson, cultural atache to the Court of St James's - and it's unclear how many non-fictional Australians have actually used it. But even invented slang has to have a crude plausibility, and Humphries certainly has an ear for it.

Men At Work had a strong local following through their resident gig at the Cricketer's Arms in Melbourne, and in 1980 Hay, Strykert and the rest of the band got together enough dough to finance a single - "Keypunch Operator" on the A-side, and an early version of "Down Under" on the B. It was a simpler arrangement back then - just flute and guitar. When they signed with Columbia, their producer Peter McIan felt it needed a bigger, more commercial sound. So he brought it more instruments and gave it that Eighties ska-revival semi-reggae feel. On the other hand, there's still plenty of authentic Australiana in there: the flute motif is based around the tune of the children's jingle "Kookaburra".

Joe Stein, the librettist of Fiddler On The Roof, once told me about being at the Tokyo premiere of the show and a Japanese theatergoer expressing amazement to him that the musical had ever been a hit in America "because it's so Japanese". Stein loved the story because it illustrated what every artist aims for: you do something highly specific, and it turns out to be universal. Likewise for "Down Under": Almost immediately, the song got taken up by Jewish wedding bands. "Apparently," said Colin Hay, "it has a very similar structure to a lot of Jewish folk songs." Eventually, Yossi and Avi Piamenta wound up setting traditional Hebrew wedding lyrics to the tune. In South Korea, the song became a favorite of parodists because, to the Korean ear, strange words like "Vegemite" and "chunder" sounded less like English than Korean.

In the end, though, it remains the one great international pop hit that, to the rest of the planet, encapsulates Australia. In true rock'n'roll fashion, no sooner had they had their great success than the band became riven by "musical differences", split rancorously, and have spent most of the last two decades insisting to rock journalists that they're not "bitter". Colin Hay started calling himself Colin James Hay and made an album called Man At Work. Not only wasn't he on speaking terms with much of the old band, he wasn't even on speaking-about-them terms. If any interviewer raised the subject of the good old days, Hay would refer to his old comrades Jerry Speiser and John Rees not by name but only as "the drummer" and "the bassist". As for his songwriting partner, by the Nineties Ron Strykert had been jailed in Montana for owing child support and joined the Church Universal and Triumphant, a religious sect eagerly awaiting Armageddon from their compound near Yellowstone National Park. It seems safe to say he's doing less chundering than he used to, or, if he is, it's not because of the flowing beer.

But so what? Even though enough Men At Work put the rancor on hold to get enough of the men back to work for a magnificent performance of "Down Under" at the close of the Sydney Olympics, it's not about them anymore. The song's wiggled free and escaped into the great beyond. You know who should do it? The guy who did "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". Rolf Harris did the all-time greatest version - on his didgeridoo - of "Stairway To Heaven", and if any song's crying out for the full Rolf it's this one. Like the man says:

You better run, you better take cover.

Happy Australia Day!

Walking your pets and the nanny state

Most people walk dogs.

Here's a traditional type of british eccentric who walks his owls.

And the nastiest types of corruption -favouring  politically correct local officials, the new Europeanized breed who believe in control, the fifth columnists in the fight against Hitler who have finally won.Busybodies.

see if you can guess the idiom: to be gutted " from the context

It originally meant to REMOVe the guts from a fish, or a chicken, to be used as food , then by metaphorical extension a gutted building had had everything removed except the walls.

Man forced to stop walking owls by busy Plymouth road

A 74-year-old Devon man is "gutted" after being asked to stop walking his owls by a busy Plymouth road.

A Devon man has been asked to stop walking his owls in a town centre after someone reported him.

Police referred the matter to Plymouth City Council who said Russell Burt's pets could be a danger to the public and traffic.

For the past few years, the 74-year-old from Plympton has regularly taken the birds to the local shopping area at Ridgeway.

"I really feel a bit gutted," Mr Burt told BBC News.

"The owls enjoy going out and about and everybody loves seeing them," he said.

"Now because somebody thinks they shouldn't be out by day I can't do it any more."

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Unusually loud noise, as is entirely possible at the very edge of a busy highway, could distress the animal”

Plymouth City Council

Mr Burt's collection includes barn owls, spotted eagle owls, a tawny owl and an African white faced scoptail.

He usually takes one, or occasionally two, to the pedestrianised St Stephen's Place on the Ridgeway, where people can stop to look at the owls.

Any donations he receives are given to the local Woodside Animal Sanctuary.

Mr Burt has a licence, the birds are tethered, he has public liability insurance and the owls have never been involved in an accident.

Despite this, the council has asked him not to walk them on the Ridgeway after a member of the public told police the owls should be sleeping during the day.

"The council told me 'you're not allowed to take them on the public highway because they're a danger to the public and also to traffic', so that was that I can't do it no more cause I don't want to go to jail," he said.

He will, however, be able to continue taking the owls to visit residential homes or local shows and fetes.

The council insists its concerns are over the birds' welfare next to a busy road

More than 100 people have signed an online petition which has been set up calling on the council to overturn its decision.

Plymouth City Council said owls in the wild are normally nocturnal and there could be welfare issues about exposing them to city environments.

In a statement, a council spokesperson said: "The real thing to clarify here is that we have in no way imposed a ban upon the activities of this gentleman.

"Instead we have simply asked that he find a different way to transport his owls rather than walking them directly alongside one of the busiest roads in the city.

"The core issue for us is that our animal protection experts are worried that a sudden and unusually loud noise, as is entirely possible at the very edge of a busy highway, could distress the animal."

bbc on st thomas abecket, just because