‘I Want a Man’, anonymous poem, Above Rubies, Jul. 2005 (distributed in October owing to financial constraints), 18:

No, I won’t sign the lib’s petition,
To do away with wife’s submission,
I’d be a fool to boss my spouse,
I want a man and not a mouse!

[And I thought their prose was crook!]

Australian Prayer Network, ‘India: Miracles Turn People to Jesus’, 17 Oct. 2005:

In Chattisgargh State, a deadly snake wrapped itself around a 15 year-old’s hand during a church planting seminar. He managed to brush it off but it fell on someone else. That person also managed to shake it off and it finally landed on an open Bible. It died on the spot. The witnesses who did not yet know Jesus were astonished and many have started following Jesus.

[My colleague Bronwyn Thompson immediately trumped this with a story about a two-headed Indian hermaphrodite - but you can't win 'em all.]

And now a blast from the past, some time in the late fourth century CE to be precise:

Richard E. Rubenstein (1999) When Jesus Became God, 209, regarding St Basil the Great’s formulation of Trinitarian doctrine:

Basil’s answer … was to declare that what was common to the Three and what was distinctive among them lay beyond speech and comprehension and therefore beyond either analysis or conceptualisation.

[Ah, Basil the Great! Now there was a used car salesman!]

Brian Houston, National President, Assemblies of God in Australia, in Linda Morris ‘Churches warn family time and rights at risk’, Melbourne Age, 11 Oct. 2005:

… [Houston] said he was relaxed about the impact of the [industrial relations] changes and it was ‘incumbent on the church to be relevant enough for people to make church and the spiritual aspects of their life a priority’.

[This from the man whose best-known book is You Need More Money.]

Warwick Marsh, Fatherhood Foundation, in Simon Hayes ‘Porn filtering back on agenda’, Australian, 11 Oct. 2005:

… [A]ny [internet] filtering is better than nothing. We are trying to reduce the pornographication of our society.

[Words fail me - as they appear to have failed Warwick.]

Cardinal George Pell, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, in Linda Morris ‘More priests needed, even married ones, say clergy’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 Oct. 2005:

Cardinal Pell maintains that the Sydney diocese’s current crop of seminarians, at present numbering about 40, is sufficient.

[Better stick some more water in the Communion wine.]

Simeon Bennett, Camberwell Vic., letter in Melbourne Age, 13 Oct. 2005:

[The Bible writers] worked on the understanding … that God would not be God if He always made sense to us.

[Congratulations, Simeon, you've encapsulated the perfect irrelevance of conservative Christianity to the modern world.]

Fred Nile, Christian Democratic Party, Family World News, Oct. 2005, 2:

[Hurricane Katrina] and the earlier tsunami … [have] raised the question - is this Almighty God’s deliberate intention? Is it a warning from God? Is it God’s judgement on sin? If God is blamed, then how could a loving God cause thousands of women and children to suffer and even die? Yet are these events designed to bring the world to its knees in prayer …?

[No; no; no; good question; and no. Do I win, Fred?]

Rev. Richard Condie, vicar at St Jude’s Anglican Church, Carlton Vic., regarding his parishioner, Prof. Ian Harper, new boss of the Australian Fair Pay Commission, in Shane Green ‘Paymaster who’ll say what’s fair’, Melbourne Age, 14 Oct. 2005:

Ian is a very principled person, so takes his faith very seriously … His economics, I think, are done through a Christian worldview grid.

[I'm thinking of offering a small prize to anyone who can outline the basis of the 'Christian worldview grid' along with convincing evidence that a majority of Christians accept it. For example, as part of their Christian worldview, Christian Reconstructionist economists advocate voluntary slavery in order to repay debts. I guess one Christian's worldview is another Christian's psychotic delusion.]

Pastor Rick Brouwer, Director, Total Wellbeing Medical and Counselling Centre, Salt Shakers Journal, Oct. 2005, 13:

The health benefits of becoming a Christian can be compared to someone giving up heavy smoking and losing 20 kilos.

[Look no further for Australia's next Nobel Prize. It's in the bag!]

Gregory Pike, Director, Southern Cross Bioethics Institute, ‘Therapeutic cloning will make a commodity of human life’, Melbourne Age, 4 Oct. 2005:

[Somatic cell nuclear transfer is] really making a cloned human embryo of someone … and destroying him/her after five days of careful nurturing, using the stem cells for a research project, and all the time hoping like crazy that maybe the movies were right and clones don’t have a soul.

[I wouldn't mind seeing that movie, Greg. Is it as good as 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'?]

Peter Stokes, Salt Shakers, email, 3 Oct. 2005:

The Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commissioner has decided, despite all the evidence, to make the Tasmanian Red Cross ‘justify’ their ban on homosexuals giving blood. We believe the ban should be EXTENDED to all people who engage in promiscuous sexual activity, not just homosexuals …

[Thanks, Pete, that should be easy. Now, your definition of 'promiscuity'? Having sex with anyone other than your lawfully wedded spouse? Thought so. May as well close the blood bank down right now.]

Ros Phillips, Festival of Light Australia, ‘9 Songs banned in SA’, Festival Focus South Australia, Sept. 2005, 2:

Mrs Phillips said the latest research shows that pornography use leads to increased levels of domestic violence, date rape and incest.

[The latest research also shows that you should ignore all undocumented claims about 'the latest research' - except this one.]

Cameron Horn, ‘Real Life or Fiction - It’s All Drama for the Christophobe’, Family World News, Oct. 2005, 6:

Leave it to the news to deliver the coup de grace as far as antichristianism is concerned. In the time-honoured tradition, the reporting of two mass murderers this year centred, majored - yea verily, obsessed, over the church affiliations of the accused. The sixty year sentence handed down for the ‘Mississippi Burning’ murders had the ABC News salivating at the prospect of designating the prisoner as ‘the former preacher’. Equally, news outlets everywhere hailed the BLK killer as a ‘Lutheran church president’ first and anything else, second.

[Yes, Cam, sweep all this stuff under the rug, that's my advice. Worked well for the Catholic Church till some malcontents opened their big yaps, so it's time evangelicals gave it a go.]

Filed in: Their Own Mouths