{"id":3580,"date":"2005-09-04T10:02:57","date_gmt":"2005-09-04T14:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3580"},"modified":"2010-07-13T12:23:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T16:23:00","slug":"tea-and-cake-or-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3580","title":{"rendered":"Tea and cake, or death?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This very interesting piece in The New Criterion about the Church of England <\/a>(written by a minister in the church) has almost too many bizarre elements to believe – I found myself laughing out loud at some of it (especially in the beginning) – but of course the entire thing reminded me of Eddie Izzard’s <\/a>brilliant routine about the Church of England, which culminates with him imagining what would have happened if CofE were in charge of the Spanish Inquisition. The choices: “Tea and cake, or death?”<\/p>\n

“Thank you for flying Church of England, cake or death?”<\/p>\n

“Church of England is really more like a hobby.”<\/p>\n

“The reading today is from … a magazine I found! Apparently, pink lipsticks are all the rage right now … and … uh … well … ” [light bulb goes on in his brain] “This reminds me of our Lord Jesus!”<\/p>\n

“We need to have some principles<\/i>, get us some principles<\/i>!”<\/p>\n

“There really isn’t any sin in the Church of England. You say, ‘Oh, Vicar, I have sinned.’ He says:” [in a kind of lush-y voice] ” ‘Well, so have I.’ ”<\/p>\n

From that essay:<\/p>\n

I recently attended a conference for clergy at a beautiful medieval church in Oxford. It was supposed to be a choral Eucharist but there was no organ music\u0097only some plinky-plonky stuff on an out-of-tune piano and mindless choruses in the Jesus Goes to Toytown fashion: interminable glum repetition of what was not worth singing once.<\/p>\n

Then the Bishop came on and told us that at the laughably misnamed riot called \u0093The Peace\u0094 he didn\u0092t want us merely to shake hands but to \u0093hug one another\u0094\u0097and not just to hug one another, but to put our arms on our neighbor\u0092s shoulders and say three times, \u0093You are everlastingly loved.\u0094 When, with varying degrees of squeamishness, grown men fawned on one another in this way, the Bishop came on again in full pantomime mode and said, \u0093Not loud enough! Again\u0097louder!\u0094 Not one word from the Book of Common Prayer throughout the three-day conference or indeed from any source that might be identified as religious in the traditional sense. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I swear to God, if someone made me put my arms around a stranger’s shoulders and shout “You are everlastingly loved” at them, three times, I would walk out. Don’t shout at me, Vicar. For God’s sake, that is so fucking ridiculous. I don’t even know what I’m really reacting to – and why it grosses me out so much … Maybe because that encounter group stuff turns me off? But it doesn’t really … I mean, not just because it’s encounter group-ish. It’s just … First of all, it has a groupthink aspect to it – and a peer pressure aspect to it (“Why aren’t you shouting as loudly as that man over there? You must not REALLY mean it, you’re not trying hard enough…”) that I find abusive and disturbing.<\/p>\n

To have a priest scream “louder” at you? Fuck. You. As though your VOLUME is some indicator of the sincerity in your heart. What a total misunderstanding of not only spirituality and religion but of humanity itself. We all know that the loudest people are often the biggest assholes on the face of the fucking planet, and the people who are quiet, and humble, and shut the fuck UP are the ones doing the real good deeds.<\/p>\n

It reminds me of acting classes I’ve been in – doing certain relaxation exercises – where the person who starts bawling first is roundly congratulated and held up as the good example. As though tears on face = good acting. Many charlatan acting teachers make it their GOAL to produce tears on the faces of their students … they’re all about “catharsis” – but in the end, that has nothing to do with acting, and it’s just fucking phony. And so someone like myself – who is a good actress but who isn’t necessarily a big “cry-er” would be pushed and pushed to get tears on my face. This has nothing to do with acting. This has to do with a stupid teacher who gets some ego boost out of making people cry because it makes her feel like a good teacher. So I’d be lying there on my yoga mat, listening to the weeping and wailing around me, the room filling with sounds of ululations … thinking: “Uhm … okay … if I just CRY then this class will be over much quicker.”<\/p>\n

So much for sincerity in acting. I can squeeze out a few tears, sure I can. Here are the tears. Where’s my prize? It turns acting in the phoniest of enterprises, phony mcphony, man.<\/p>\n

So that’s what it is. “You are everlastingly loved” strikes me as fucking PHONY and I’m with Holden Caulfield on this one: there is nothing I have more contempt for than people who are fucking phonies.<\/p>\n

And I just … listen to this:<\/p>\n

the giggling theological colleges are run like children\u0092s television.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

wow. hahahahaha It actually is a very humorously written article, although quite a sad indictment of the church itself.<\/p>\n

And so we come back to the real question:<\/p>\n

Tea and cake, or death?<\/p>\n

Tea and cake or death. Tea and cake or death. Little red cookbook, little red cookbook, Tea and cake … orrrrrrr deaaaaaaath???<\/p>\n

Uhm … cake, please?<\/p>\n

(If you don’t know who Eddie Izzard is, then I have a couple things to say. First of all: What the hell is your problem??? Second of all: that entire last section is from his HBO special Dress to Kill<\/a><\/i>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This very interesting piece in The New Criterion about the Church of England (written by a minister in the church) has almost too many bizarre elements to believe – I found myself laughing out loud at some of it (especially … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[326],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3580"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19610,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3580\/revisions\/19610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}