Peddling Smut for Jesus with J. Mark Brewer

An astute reader left a comment on an earlier post suggesting that purchasing a book through Mark Brewer’s Third Space Books online facility reveals the internet’s favourite litigant now owns Amazon.

Naturally I checked this claim, and sure enough after clicking the “Proceed to checkout” button I was forwarded to Amazon, where my transaction was concluded. Indeed, since Amazon also has a history of causing the closure of small community focused book-sellers the match seemed seemed logical.

Yet further investigation revealed that Amazon remains a viable business, and their employees are all being paid. Neither have they to my knowledge recently sent any “Cease & Desist” emails, so perhaps rumours of a J. Mark Brewer takeover are incorrect. More likely the two have just formed a simple symbiotic relationship which frees SPCK’s new owner from such burdens as carrying stock, or hiring staff – or all the other nuisances involved in running a bookshop.

Certainly, Mark Brewer’s new range includes titles the old SPCK would have never dreamed of carrying: as just two screenshots from my most stimulating morning’s shopping reveal:





Clearly Orthodoxy J. Mark Brewer style is a whole lot more fun that anyone realised, and I must commend the SSG trust for recognizing that they’ll make more selling copies of "Sinful Sex: The Uninhibited Guide to Erotic Pleasure” (another title that caught my eye this morning) than they can ever hope to get from “Great Beards of Byzantium” or whatever it is that’s usually topping the Orthodox bookseller’s charts. Sure the Venerable Orthodox Arch-Primate of Houston (or whoever the clergyman that banks Mark’s tithes is) might have a few problems with “Solitary Wicca for Life: A Complete Guide to Mastering the Craft on Your Own”, and make sure his medication is handy when he sees “Up All Night: Adventures in Lesbian Sex” - “In the tradition of the very finest erotic best-sellers...”. Yet any true GAFCON Christian will instantly understand that the potential profits more than justify any apparent moral hypocrisy.

As I’m quite certain Mark Brewer would publically deny, in the end it’s all about the money. Now please excuse me, as Consuella and I must practise the position on page 37 in one of our new purchases.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.

Archbishop Orombi Sets Everything Straight

After being wickedly misquoted by the atheist western media, who published a letter suggesting he is obsessed with homosexuality and believes the west to be source of all evil, Bishop Orombi of Uganda has now made a clarifying statement on a God-fearing Bible-believing web site in which he explains he is actually obsessed with homosexuality and believes the west to be source of all evil.

Even more importantly, Bishop Orombi explains that “When you are known to be the "Gay Church" and a church that can't discipline itself, that severely hinders our ability to engage our communities on such issues as clean water, food, employment, and good governance.”

How right he is! The world is filled with people who would rather die of thirst than risk catching gay cooties from clergy in communion with homosexuals living on the other side of the planet. And hark how succinctly Bishop Orombi summarises his country of Uganda’s tragic history, which several decades ago was a model of justice and integrity, but today – in the wake of Bishop Robinson’s inexcusable installation - has like so much of fundamentalist Africa become a quagmire of corruption and impropriety.

Indeed, rarely a day goes by when some beggar does not crawl to my Rectory doorstep seeking alms, only to run away screaming when they realise the largesse which we are about to bestow upon them is irrevocably tainted by the Communion’s heterosexually challenged members – either that or Consuella’s let the dogs out; but either way there can be no doubt the unfortunate indigent departs understanding all their problems can be directly traced to New Hampshire Episcopalians.

Like Bishop Orombi, we’d love to be more helpful, but can’t because people know we're in Communion with homosexuals. Which has got to be the best excuse since a group of morally unquestionable gentlemen at Nuremburg insisted they were “only following orders”.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.

Lambeth Saves the Last Dance for Pete

Now that the last Lambeth Lambada is over and the merry throng have been herded back to wherever it is they’ll spend the next ten years grumbling about the Church that has just fed and watered them better than the average parishioner will ever receive in return for their faithfulness, the Archbishop of Canterbury and his inner circle will be feeling relieved to be able to get back to not doing whatever it is that they don’t do for the other nine years and fifty weeks of every decade.

Yet has anyone else noticed how quiet Big Pete Akinola and Little Pete Jensen have been during the past fortnight? Bishop Bobby Duncan managed to grab a few headlines by going public with his dreams of becoming the Grand Poobah of Orthodox North America, but not even this incited Pete & Pete into breaking their new vow of silence. Naturally the peace and quiet won’t last, but there are very interesting reasons behind it.

In Big Pete’s case it’s because he’s been forced to attend more closely to matters at home, and these have had him busier than a one-armed man with crabs. You might be fooled by the smiling faces of Akinola’s clergy, but he isn’t, and there’s no shortage of Nigerian Bishops who are downright bitter at having been forced to miss out on the greatest Anglican rort of them all. Even if they share a cultural fondness sympathy with Big Pete’s psychotic homophobia, since they’re not as fixated as he is on the issue (is anyone?) it certainly doesn’t fill the void caused by their having missed a few weeks respite from the peaceful and bountiful embrace of regional Nigeria.

Little Pete Jensen’s uncharacteristic hush is more complex. Despite buzzing around dear old England like a mosquito in the weeks leading up to ++Rowan’s party, all of a sudden his profile shrank like cotton-candy in hot water. Some speculated this was because the Australian government had refused him re-entry while the Pope was in town, since no country could cope with those two egos in the same place at once, but I think the problem went deeper than that.

In fact sources close to him say the Mouth from the South has actually been terrified Canterbury would follow through on threats of an Anglican Covenant, and wanted to keep as low a profile as possible while that particular stick was being tossed around. Sure, if it ever got passed, a Covenant would stop Episcopalians from enthroning people of Bishop Robinson’s calibre, and just might specify that in the future Bishops are always equipped with a more-or-less functioning penis, but from the Jensen family’s perspective these are secondary to the fact that they know they’d be the first to lose their heads should an Anglican Magisterium ever start holding court.

This is because lay presidency and blatant border hopping – unlike the installation of Bishops – isn’t a one-off event, but a weekly affair that having been let out of the bag that not even the combined forces of Little Pete’s entire family could ever put pack in: when you ordain every loose fundamentalist canon you find it must eventually occur to you that one might very easily emit enough sparks to ignite the packet of fireworks you’ve been keeping in your trouser pocket.

Little Pete may be urging everyone else to abandon their vows and set up shop in imaginary-Sees, but he’s not silly enough to do it himself. And he’s well aware that if the Covenant had been passed he might not have had any choice in the matter.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.

Archbishop Rowan Williams Heeds My Teaching

At last! The Archbishop of Canterbury has finally started taking my advice, and begun blaming everything on the liberals.

For far too long he’s tip-toed around trying not to offend anyone, when - as I’ve kept telling him - the solution to all his problems has been right in front of him all along – blame all the Church’s problems on the group least likely to defend themselves by hitting back. After all, who are the only ones in the Communion that haven’t threatened to break away? Who have never so much as toyed with the idea of boycotting anything; and who’ve made it clear that they’ll remain loyal no matter how often they get abused, insulted and kicked? The liberals! So obviously they’re the perfect scapegoat, as no matter how what His Grace says there’s no risk of them ever picking up Teddy and finding somewhere new to play.

Besides, isn’t it the liberals who are responsible for what happened to Jesus? To be perfectly honest it’s been a while since I’ve looked too closely at the Gospels, as I generally only preach from Leviticus or Deuteronomy (which I find create a splendid framework for interpreting the Epistles), and for personal devotional material it’s mighty hard to go past Judges and the Song of Solomon, but if I remember correctly didn’t Jesus get very angry with a group of liberals who kept healing people on the Sabbath? And didn’t these same liberals eventually crucify Him for refusing to share their disrespect for God’s Law?

Similarly, wasn’t it Jesus who threw stones at a woman caught in the very act of adultery because the Law says that’s what God demands we do? Even if this is a waste of a perfectly attractive woman whom you just know is likely to be up for a bit when her husband’s not around?

No, while I must get around to one day having a closer look at those front bits of the New Testament, it certainly seems to me that Jesus didn’t have an ounce of empathy for the liberal notion of living in accordance with the Spirit of the Scriptures – but instead demanded we serve God by going straight for the throat of anyone not pedantically obsessed with the Letter of the Law. Which is no doubt why Our Lord was so impressed by the Pharisees.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.

My Personal Pet Bishop

Lambeth has just about ground to a close, and what with all the excitement about little Mark Brewer getting picked on by bloggers I’d just about forgotten the Grand Poobahs of Anglicanism were busy accomplishing nothing in Yabbadabbadoo groups - or whatever it is those peace-loving Zulus used to call the meetings they’d have before unanimously agreeing to slaughter their enemies.

Still, the end of Lambeth has had one important ramification for us here at St. Onuphrius’: it means that the time has come for our visiting GAFCON Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Quinine, to leave us and return to the God-forsaken corner of the Communion from whence we found him. Except as I feared, he now doesn’t want to go, and is pleading that we might let him stay.

It’s all complicated somewhat by Evangelical Eric, who’s been coming along so well under Bishop Quinine’s influence. Eric’s fiancé, Miss Celia Crane recently started working for the parish in our Ceausescu Creche Children’s Facility, where she is responsible for shaking the babies, as well as ensuring toddlers “cry it out of their system” – whatever “it” may be – and they’ve both grown so fond of the old drunkard that they’d be devastated to se him leave.

So since I’m unwilling to lose another Curate so soon into this one’s tenure, and Miss Crane is unquestionably blessed with a gift when it comes to ignoring normal human instincts to show compassion towards infants, I’ve agreed to a compromise solution: Bishop Quinine will stay with us illegally as our Bishop-in-Residence on the condition that when it becomes expedient for us to be associated with mainstream non-schismatic Anglicanism – at such times as when our liberal apostate “real” Bishop visits to bestow handouts, for example – he'll pretend to be the Verger. He’s well aware that at the first hint of any disobedience the Authorities will be notified, and that he’ll be deported, never to return, so I can safely say that I’m now the first GAFCON Rector to have their own personal obedience-trained Bishop. It’ll be like having a pet turtle, but more colourful, less messy, and even more impressive when it’s my turn for show and tell.

I predict that in time there’ll be hundreds of clergy emulating my lead, but for now the thrill of setting a precedent is sending shivers up and down my Righteous Backbone. What’s more, since Bishop Quinine is now an illegal alien I know exactly who to call should he grow annoying and compel me to shoot him in the backside.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.

Poor Mark Brewer - He's not Dave Walker.

Despite operating the best little lawhouse in Texas, J. Mark Brewer is a man in pain. As he’s said himself, he’s a private person, and the multitude of insufferable bloggers daring to question his creative commitment to free speech and business management must be bringing him to tears almost as great as those who invested in a previous Mark Brewer project: the innovative dot.com BidLaw, which looks like it resulted in the world’s first Google click-farm to cost a million dollars – I won’t provide a link to that site because I’m sure Mark would hate everyone surging over there and boosting his Adsense income by clicking on such legally-related topics as “Laser Welding on eBay” – but if anyone’s really interested just Ask Father Christian.

Perhaps because he’s unable to afford my fees - which are coincidentally the same as those of Steve Stockman, who Mark engaged as a consultant few years back, and who's been unkindly described elsewhere as a “nut” (Why shouldn’t congress have passed a bill investigating the Kinsey reports?) – Mr. Brewer has so far not replied to my offers of help. Still, he can be assured that Father Christian is standing by to support him the moment he engages my services. And pays for them in cash, in advance, since the following open letter from Pauline Edwards originally posted as an unsolicited comment here, makes me just the teensiest bit nervous Mark mightn’t have been in class the day they taught Deuteronomy 24:15 at Oral Roberts University.

Mr Brewer,
Could you tell me please, why you told a fellow worker, that their job was safe, and it was o.k. to take their first mortgage out to buy a house. The fellow worker trusted you, after asking you a few times. That fellow worker has took the biggest debt ever, on your assurance, and was only in there new home 2 days, when they were sacked by email, and left this person with no wages to pay their first mortgage payment.
Does this ring a bell Mr Brewer?

In fact here’s another open letter flying around which people have the temerity to think that as a self-professed Christian Mark is under some obligation to answer:

Dear Mr Brewer,
This is neither to be defamatory nor vile. I must simply remind you that in February of this year you failed to attend a meeting that you arranged with my wife, among others. You did not attempt to contact her or any of the other participants instead you chose to be in Cambridge and on the television. I spoke to you at the Cambridge shop to acertain your presence there.
How can you complain of the vile and defamatory language, which I confess I have failed to spot, when your own rudeness is so noticeable and hurtful. I hope to meet you again at my wife’s tribunal hearing and, of course, I continue to pray for you and the booksellers who once so faithfully served the Lord through their commitment to their customers.
Yours in Christ,
Eric

Sadly I fear the pressure could be getting to dear Mark, since I’ve just been forwarded an email he sent to someone in Australia, of all places, which was headed “So you want to send threats to bloggers' victims?” and said nothing but “I am Mark Brewer. Always have been. Always will be.” If living with that isn’t more than any man can bear, what is?

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.

Lambeth - an S&M Hotbed

If there’s one thing all this Lambeth fuss teaches us, it’s that the Archbishop of Canterbury has a strange masochistic streak. By that I don’t mean the sort of youthful high jinks that Brother Richthofen’s friends from Seminary get up to, with their funny leather costumes and studded paddles, but a really deep-seated desire to be psychologically pushed around and insulted.

Really, why else would he keep asking senior toadies from a church not his own, and which doesn’t even recognise his own Holy Orders, let alone his office as Grand Tufti of All that is Anglican, to come and tell him and his Bishops how they’re doing everything wrong? What on earth does the Big Cheese of Cantaur expect: that someone who delights in kissing the Pope’s ring on a daily basis is going to say “You Anglicans are all the greatest Ministers of God since the Holy Spirit guided Cranmer’s marriage counselling sessions with Henry VIII?”

As the World’s Finest Parish Priest and Bible-teacher I’ve got to say I’ve never met anyone who contributes to my offertory because of what some Cardinal says or doesn’t say. The Romans are a colourful lot, and they can certainly teach us a tremendous deal about treating women as second-class citizens, but at the end of the day anything they might say is secondary to our real business of building profitable and successful parishes. And listening to them tell us over and over how we’re getting it all wrong because we’re not doing things their way isn’t going to help me or anyone else build a Jacuzzi in the manse.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.