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Old April 3rd, 2015 #161
EDLIE Stampton
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Happy Ostara!
Was at 88-1.
Now down to 14.
There has been a lot of interest and some strange betting practices over the last 24 hours.
THE DRUIDS NEPHEW at 12-1 is a better pagan bet and indigenous to these islands.
 
Old April 3rd, 2015 #162
andy
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I usually post something here from satirical site Newsthump on Frdays but there's no need today.




ht tp://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3024281/Filipino-devotees-nailed-crosses-Good-Friday-rites.html
It is even worse here in the UK. I have this very day(Good Friday) been cold called by some protestant dingbat who wants me to attend a local Alpha Course and pay for it!!!. Surely she would be prostrate somewhere babbling in voices? Then again maybe she was
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Old April 3rd, 2015 #163
Dawn Cannon
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It is even worse here in the UK. I have this very day(Good Friday) been cold called by some protestant dingbat who wants me to attend a local Alpha Course and pay for it!!!. Surely she would be prostrate somewhere babbling in voices? Then again maybe she was
Good grief, the Devil At Three O' Clock.

 
Old April 3rd, 2015 #164
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a) what the hell is an Alpha Course when it's at home?

b) Why do you have to pay for it? You should have asked her if she's heard of christian charity.
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Old April 3rd, 2015 #165
Dawn Cannon
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a) what the hell is an Alpha Course when it's at home?

b) Why do you have to pay for it? You should have asked her if she's heard of christian charity.

Don't worry, like andy you are genetically (and intellectually) protected from Alpha Courses.
 
Old April 3rd, 2015 #166
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a) what the hell is an Alpha Course when it's at home?

b) Why do you have to pay for it? You should have asked her if she's heard of christian charity.
a) It is a bourgeois friendly holy roller con trick the Anglicans use to reassure the simpletons that the church still loves them really and that they are privy to the bottom line.
b) They charge to deter the ethnics and convince the target rubes it is exclusively for them
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Old April 3rd, 2015 #167
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Don't worry, like andy you are genetically (and intellectually) protected from Alpha Courses.
That's a non-denominational blessing. I just looked them up on Wiki and see they deal with speaking in tongues. Not for me. I remember seeing someone speaking in tongues at a local "spiritual centre" that a few friends and I went to once as teens. We got chucked out for taking the piss.
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Old April 3rd, 2015 #168
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a) It is a bourgeois friendly holy roller con trick the Anglicans use to reassure the simpletons that the church still loves them really and that they are privy to the bottom line.
b) They charge to deter the ethnics and convince the target rubes it is exclusively for them
Sounds like the BBC.
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Old April 3rd, 2015 #169
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a) what the hell is an Alpha Course when it's at home?

b) Why do you have to pay for it? You should have asked her if she's heard of christian charity.
Actually giving it more thought this could be just the thing for your spiritual redemption - group hugs and reassurance from other overwrought highly strung types trying to make sense of the modern world I can see you being borne again having undergone the process
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Old April 3rd, 2015 #170
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"spiritual centre"
.......and BEFORE anyone starts yapping about abandoning faith or being a cheese eating apostate, we had mistaken "spiritual centre" for "spiritualist". We thought there would be contacting of the dead.


edited to add: too late.
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Old April 3rd, 2015 #171
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Actually giving it more thought this could be just the thing for your spiritual redemption - group hugs and reassurance from other overwrought highly strung types trying to make sense of the modern world I can see you being borne again having undergone the process
With the speaking in tongues malarkey and unintelligible spluttering I'm surprised you're not running the courses.
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Old April 3rd, 2015 #172
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With the speaking in tongues malarkey and unintelligible spluttering I'm surprised you're not running the courses.
I bet you would do the course if I was
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Old April 3rd, 2015 #173
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Default Alpha: The slickest, richest, fastest-growing division of the Church of England

When the announcement was made that Justin Welby, a disciple of the Alpha course, was to become the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury, his Alpha brethren did not punch the air in triumph. Not publicly, in any case. Nicky Gumbel, vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton and the man who turned Alpha into a global phenomenon, made a point of keeping a low profile, travelling abroad on various missions. When I interviewed him earlier this year, he played down HTB’s role in Welby’s ascension, saying, ‘I think we have to believe it is the providence of God.’

But for all His mysteries, it can hardly be ascribed to coincidence that the head of the Church of England has come from the slickest, richest and fastest-growing division the church has ever seen. The Alpha course is only nanoseconds old within the C of E’s 1,500-year history. It was founded in 1977 by Charles Marnham, and grew under Gumbel during the 1980s. Around 1.2 million people have now taken an Alpha course in the UK, and a further 23 million people worldwide, in 169 countries. Its nucleus is still Holy Trinity Brompton, or HTB, a Victorian church tucked behind the Catholic behemoth of the Brompton Oratory, across the road from Harrods.

If, 30 years ago, you had predicted that the Archbishop of Canterbury would one day be HTB positive (as it is known), the scoffing would have been heard in Rome. But today, Welby’s ascension is endorsed by almost every side. Stephen Glover and Charles Moore hail him as the man who can bring unity to the church, while Andrew Brown of the Guardian has applauded his attempts to address homophobia. So how did the HTB evangelists, once viewed as guitar-wielding weirdos, manoeuvre themselves into a position of such power?

For one thing, they don’t call themselves evangelists. The term has connotations of, at best, a goofy Ned Flanders naivety, and, at worst, a brainwashing cult that expects 50 per cent of your salary in the collection bowl. But evangelising is what they do. ‘The Alpha course is for people who don’t go to church,’ explains Mark Elsdon-Dew, a former Express news editor who runs the PR operation. ‘But it’s not a church. It’s a publishing company. It’s a resource for churches to use, to introduce people to Christianity.’

Gumbel has more staff than the Archbishop of Canterbury, and has been far more influential than Welby for years, but he insists he has never converted anyone to Christianity — ‘that’s the work of the Holy Spirit’. He also bristles at the term evangelical. ‘I hate the word,’ he says. ‘If you torture me, I’m Anglican. It’s not helpful. We label people in order to dismiss them.’

Gumbel and Welby were at Eton together, and then Trinity College, Cambridge. (Strangely, Charles Moore was another contemporary, though of course he took a different spiritual path.) Their rooms abutted, and though initially they embarked on different careers — Gumbel the law, Welby to become an oil executive — they remained close friends. Since Welby’s enthronement, a clear nexus has opened up between the Archbishop’s office and HTB. Welby was the star speaker at HTB’s sell-out ‘leader’s conference’ at the Royal Albert Hall in May, where more than 5,000 delegates paid £120 to watch him being interviewed by Gumbel. Mark Elsdon-Dew had by then already begun a three-month secondment from HTB to Lambeth Palace, where he conducted a thorough review of the PR operation there. And in June Dr Chris Russell was appointed Welby’s adviser on mission and evangelism. He was previously on the staff of the hugely influential and thriving evangelical church Soul Survivor in Watford.

As Rowan Williams learnt to his cost, getting the PR right is nine tenths of the challenge. And PR happens to be something Alpha does very well. Their schtick is to be non-threatening, accessible and open. They use clever and well-targeted non-religious marketing to bring in rich and influential people. Typical strategies include posters on buses asking tired commuters if there is something missing in their lives. The first meetings are always friendly and social: a chat and supper, nothing ritualistic. That comes later. And for many, Alpha works: it brings them a new purpose and plugs them into a social scene of like-minded people that happens to involve prayer.

But according to Alpha’s critics, there is a hidden and not so wholesome agenda to all this. ‘Nothing short of outright victory is what most evangelicals want,’ says the Revd Richard Kirker. ‘The Alpha movement is no different. It exerts its influence by being well-organised and well-funded, and so sure of its own dogma, and so persistent, that it eventually wears down its opponents into passive submission, or drives them away from the church.’

Kirker is the former chief executive of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, an issue on which HTB and Welby take a conservative line. According to HTB, the act of gay sex is a sin, and therefore homosexuals must remain celibate. It has become a thorny issue, and within weeks of assuming office, Welby held talks with the equality campaigner Peter Tatchell. The fact that homosexuals have yet to be accorded equal rights may be an example of the influence Alpha can exert within the wider church.

‘George Carey vigorously sought to marginalise gay people when he was Archbishop,’ says Kirker. ‘When Rowan Williams came in, we all thought he would relax Carey’s polices. He had a track record of disagreeing with him on theological issues, and had called for a change on the church’s teaching. But once he was in, he was nobbled and pressurised by the evangelicals, of which Alphas were a main constituent, and bowed to all the threats that flooded in.’

Perhaps the most startling aspect of HTB is the practice of speaking in tongues. This is when congregants lose control of their voices, apparently overcome by the holy spirit. You only have to watch YouTube clips of the Toronto blessing to get an idea of how disturbing this is. That was the bizarre episode in January 1994 when the entire congregation of a church in Toronto went into a state of mass hysteria; they can be seen crawling around on all fours and howling like animals. Many considered this a cruel con trick played on impressionable people. Gumbel flew straight out to see it and hailed it as a ‘wonderful, wonderful thing’.

Back in England, he started a quiet but constant programme of expansion. He pioneered the practice of ‘church planting’ — in which a small congregation
targets a failing church and turns it round. A typical example is St Peter’s in Brighton, which was semi-derelict five years ago. It now has a congregation of 700, under HTB’s former associate vicar Archie Coates.

If the Alphas are well-organised and well-run, they are also well-funded. They have built up a small but generous clique of donors, who essentially bankroll the whole operation. Though their identities remain secret, high-profile supporters include Nat Wei, the Conservative peer, a charismatic evangelical, and Paul Szkiler, chairman of Truestone Asset Management, who also runs A Call to Business, a network for Christian businessmen. The turnover of Alpha international is £9.6 million, all of which, according to Elsdon-Dew, is spent in the course of the year. ‘It may sound like a lot, but it all goes towards running the course,’ he says. ‘We start again at zero on 1 January.’

At a time when most Anglican churches are seeing attendance fall, Alpha’s reversal of that trend should be welcome. But some, like Kirker, say the courses do more harm than good. ‘They fundamentally deceive people from the outset,’ he says. ‘They invite people in as if there were no hidden agenda, and they make
people feel as though they are inadequate for not understanding the meaning of life. They have a message which arrogantly implies that you don’t understand the Christian faith, but they do. It’s presumptuous and manipulative, and can put people off Christianity altogether.’ But even Kirker agrees that HTB’s quiet but efficient takeover is impressive. HTB was once compared to the sci-fi film The Invasion of the Body Snatchers: it looks and acts like the C of E, but one day it will consume it. It’s hard not to believe that day is now at hand.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator.../alpha-rising/

Last edited by Dawn Cannon; April 3rd, 2015 at 09:52 AM.
 
Old April 3rd, 2015 #174
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I bet you would do the course if I was
I think we all would.

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Old April 3rd, 2015 #175
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The Church

Leading light: Nicky Gumbel, 53

Family background: father Jewish refugee and lawyer; mother mayor of Kensington and Chelsea
School career: Atheist.

Afterwards: Became interested in Christianity at Cambridge. Took over the little-known Alpha course at Holy Trinity Brompton where he was curate (now vicar) in 1990. Translated into 198 languages the Alpha course has gone viral.
See also: many bishops in 19th century, but not any more.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3815...-Etonians.html (2008)
 
Old April 3rd, 2015 #176
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Perhaps the most startling aspect of HTB is the practice of speaking in tongues. This is when congregants lose control of their voices, apparently overcome by the holy spirit. You only have to watch YouTube clips of the Toronto blessing to get an idea of how disturbing this is. That was the bizarre episode in January 1994 when the entire congregation of a church in Toronto went into a state of mass hysteria; they can be seen crawling around on all fours and howling like animals.
Thanks to the 3 lagers for a quidders, I can look out of my window and see this most Friday and Saturday nights without getting fleeced in the process.
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Old April 3rd, 2015 #177
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The Church

Leading light: Nicky Gumbel, 53

Family background: father Jewish refugee and lawyer; mother mayor of Kensington and Chelsea
School career: Atheist.

Afterwards: Became interested in Christianity at Cambridge. Took over the little-known Alpha course at Holy Trinity Brompton where he was curate (now vicar) in 1990. Translated into 198 languages the Alpha course has gone viral.
See also: many bishops in 19th century, but not any more.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3815...-Etonians.html


Jews realised was is big money in evangalism.

They invented something called the prosperity gospel, they set up churches and got Africans to give them all their money, in return the Africans got good luck. Africans have now caught on and set up their own prosperity gospel chuches. Some of these preachers are worth hundreds of millions of pounds with their own tv channels and global operations. They often set up in disused bingo halls. London is full of these churches.


http://www.nairaland.com/1342968/top...-pastors-world


2.Bishop David Oyedepo

Bishop David Oyedepo is a Nigerian Preacher, Christian Author, Founder and Presiding Bishop of Winners Chapel known as Living Faith Church World Wide. Has been hailed as the wealthiest preacher in Nigeria with a total net worth of $150 million and properties like 4 private jets and homes in the United States and England



4.Benny Hinn

Israeli televangelist,Toufik Benedictus “Benny” Hinn has an estimated net worth of $42 million. He is best known for his regular “Miracle Crusades” – revival meeting/faith healing summits that are usually held in large stadiums in major cities, which are later broadcast worldwide on his television program, “This Is Your Day”. Hinn was born on December 3, 1952
 
Old April 3rd, 2015 #178
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Thanks to the 3 lagers for a quidders, I can look out of my window and see this most Friday and Saturday nights without getting fleeced in the process.
Perhaps you should point the street gangs of British nationalism in the direction of these potential recruits
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Old April 3rd, 2015 #179
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So much stuff has disappeared from the internet.

I'm searching old websites for an interesting story on how a Doogooder Alpha Course person made millions in Africa in the name of "altruism", but now all trace of it is gone.

Just goes to show, if you find something that might be of use, save the damned thing in full.
 
Old April 3rd, 2015 #180
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So much stuff has disappeared from the internet.

I'm searching old websites for an interesting story on how a Doogooder Alpha Course person made millions in Africa in the name of "altruism", but now all trace of it is gone.

Just goes to show, if you find something that might be of use, save the damned thing in full.
If you know the name of the website this is a good archive for 'em
http://archive.org/web/
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