News Jaya

The billboard - changing the story

Over the past few days it has been apparent why St Matthews in the City, an Anglican Church, erected a billboard in Auckland depicting a sad Joseph and his wife Mary in bed. It was not to inspire people to talk about the Christmas story, as initially claimed. Nor was it to provoke conversation about spiritual matters by lampooning the literal Christian conception story, as claimed later when fellow clergy disapproved.

The real reason why the billboard was erected was to slag off the idea of a male god impregnating Mary, and to deny the literalism of the virgin birth at Christmas.

In other words it was there purely to express a particular church's viewpoint( via an attack on opposing fundamentalist viewpoints) that the virgin birth never really happened and a belief that it is a fantasy story, with the consequent implication that Jesus was not sinless.

These guys call themselves progressive Christians - but it is not so clear what they are progressing to, or whether they are reactionary Christians who react to literal orthodoxy. Promoting beliefs that some Christians would describe as heretic is hardly going to inspire people to speak about the Christmas story,

the virgin birth story, or any other story save the story that this church is merely looking to create a story to get publicity. The atheist bus campaign is a much better campaign, in terms of getting people to talk about God matters, and some of these idiot Christians can learn a thing or two from the so-called atheists on how to publicise minority opinions.

The billboard has now gone down. Perhaps it will be replaced by this one. Can anyone let me know if so.