In a desperate attempt to save his beloved church, Fr Malcolm Hunter will sleep on the roof for 10 nights. In doing so, he hopes to raise £100,000 for necessary repairs to the St Michael’s Church in Camden Town, London.
The chuch is home to various needy people including asylum-seekers, the elderly, homeless people, Bengali children and people with special needs. Around 3000 people pass through the church weekly. Some come for the free hot tea, while others come for the shelter.
And for those who think Hunter won’t be roughing it, think again. The priest will be some 22 meters above the ground and without blankets. As for hygiene and food, he’ll use the same facilities as the homeless people in the shelter.
I like seeing stories of this nature. It’s good to see priests sleeping for a real cause and not with little boys for pleasure . For a brief moment I forget about all the idiotic causes like gay marriage, creationism, etc… and I see true compassion and a desire to attack real issues. Helping the homeless, mentally ill, and the forgotten is a noble cause in my book.
Rock on Fr Malcolm Hunter, you’re one righteous freak brother!
Complete story here.
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What? A devout religious figure focusing on the liberal tradition of Christianity? You know, the turn-the-other-cheek, love-thine-enemy, help-thine-neighbor, the-meek-shall-inherit-the-earth, etc. almost hippy like liberal aspect of the religion. How can this be? OOOOHHHH! He’s not an American Christian.
That is certainly strange, around here in California the pastors and priest live in million dollar houses. Religion is very profitable.
Just as an fyi, the moderate Christians (like myself) outnumber what you might consider to be “American Christians” by a pretty large margain. It’s like the red state/blue state map. By looking at one of those maps you couldn’t say for certain that an overwhelming majority of the people in that state are “red” or “blue”. All you can say for certain is that at least one more person than half the population of that stated voted “red” or “blue”.
All most people see of American Christianity is what they see on television and as I’m sure we all know (or at least should know) you can’t trust what you see on the idiot box.
And I agree, religion (not just the Christian one) can certainly be profitable. People are looking for answers and they are willing to pay vast sums of money to find them. One need only look at the scores of self help books on the shelves (a disturbing number of which are written by “pastors” or “ministers” who’ve never seen the inside of a decent seminary I’d wager) to see that. Based on my experience most people who are in religion in the professional sense aren’t in it for the money though.
While ‘moderate’ Christians may well outnumber fundamentalist (America has a very high concentration of them, hence the joke about American Christians). Furthermore their numbers, power, and influence have been growing steadily since the ’80s. Their extreme conservative bend has skewed what ‘moderate’ means. Now even formally conservative Christians seem moderate by comparison.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Things like this make me happy. This is what religion should be. If it weren’t for the fundamentalists trying to control everyone in the name of some arbitrary morals, religion could be a force for good things being done, and not the embarrasment it is now.
Frankly, I think religion sould be done away with, or at least religion as we now know it (which is to say a highly ossified, autocratic political system used for taxation and thought-control) and instead take its most basic tenents, condense/concatenate/distill them, and call it a moral philosophy. After all, one can argue that all modern religions started as philosphies,they were (and are still supposed to be) ways to lead a happier, more complete life. Get rid of the massive facades built on top of these simple tenents and religion might become topical again. That’s my two cents at least
“As for hygiene and food, he’ll use the same facilities as the homeless people in the shelter.”
So on a normal basis he views them as less then him and has to have better accommodations?
Maybe it is good that he will be so high above the masses so we do not have to smell the fowl air about him.
Lets just go to the local American catholic church and see what is happening.
The church feels that 10% of your yearly wage is the proper donation per year. So using this figure I will go with a very small congregation of 1000 adult people, of those people we will use a 35k per year income per person average.
$3,500 x 1000 = $3,500,000. per year
The city I live in has over 10,000 good church going people that on average make way over 35K and I do not see where all that money goes locally, I assume it goes into state and regional coffers so we can help to take care of all these people like that are stated in the above story.
Mmmmmm, The Red Cross is not getting any of that money, The homeless shelter is not getting any of that money, The local church dose not have a soup kitchen. so Where dose it go??
well they built a three story Copper plated and stone church Yes that is correct I did say copper. Then a Gymnasium was built and a church school was built so they could instill good christian ideals into the little snot nosed munchkins.
Now much to our delight every denomination has a school on site so we can pull the children out of the local school and teach/brainwash them only what they want them to know.
TAX FREE!! to boot. But they can be involved in all the local activities because they should be “included.”
Now these are only local donations not including the money that the elderly are swindled out of every week or month by televangelists that prey on them.
The local Post Master says he sees many letters with checks go out every week headed to these bastards let alone the cash they tuck in collection plates on Sunday.
I would rather donate my 10% to this webmaster and read the truth then pay it out to a lying sack, One that has no better chance of getting me into a church then getting me into their heaven.
@Justcauz
i attended a born-again,non-denominational church for a year straight. the preacher drove a SL500. tithing was the name of the game of course, and i inquired a few times how the “man of god” could drive such an expensive vehicle. the answer is “god wants us to prosper ” and i guess the preacher deserve s that more than anyone else. the whole idea still makes me sick to the stomach.
ok, for all you Americans out there I can say that Religion in Britain is definitely not profitable and priests do not live in million dollar houses! Infact our priest and most priests have to beg for money from the congregation to do basic repairs around their places.
This story could only happen in Britain and it is not for fame or publicity other than he needs his roof fixing! We Brits are definitely ecentric!