Today I renewed my ordination. For those of my loyal readers who were unaware of the fact, I am an ordained minister of religion, and I am entitled to use the title “Reverend”.
I have actually been able to do this for some time. The other day I realised I’d not heard from my Church for a while. It turned out they’d had a major I.T. failure and lost all the clergy’s details. But now I’ve re-registered, I am raring to once again take up my ministry.
As a minister of the Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic, I am available to do pretty much everything and anything that your average vicar gets called on to do. I have formal guidelines on a wide range of duties I might perform, including visiting the sick and housebound, conducting weddings and civil partnership celebrations, ceremonies for the naming of children, funerals, the saying of grace before a meal, and even on taking confessions.
In short, I can do anything your average vicar, priest, rabbi or any religious leader can do, but without “the God bit” thrown in. (Mind you, we don’t do circumcisions on minors!)
There are those who say that the entire concept of Apathetic Agnosticism is silly. To which I would answer by quoting the three main tenets of my faith:
- The existence of a Supreme Being is unknown and unknowable.
- If there is a Supreme Being, then that being appears to act as if apathetic to events in our universe.
- We are apathetic to the existence or non-existence of a Supreme Being.
(However, our apathy to the question of God's existence does not necessarily mean we are apathetic about promoting agnosticism.)
I would suggest that most of my critics couldn’t express their religious views so succinctly. And I would also ask that if this is a ridiculous viewpoint, then how would one describe the banning of pigs from kiddies farmyard toy sets for fear of offending the religious…?
No comments:
Post a Comment