IN a bid to boost its congregation, the Christian Victory Church in Peterborough, Ontario, hit on a plan: free petrol for the first 50 new faith-heads to turn up for a Sunday morning service.
According to this report, only six arrived to claim their $20 petrol vouchers – an indication that either the prize was to meagre to warrant the effort, or that most of the good folk of Peterborough wouldn’t be seen dead in a church for all the petrol on the planet.
A litre of gas in Ontario costs just under 98c.
The church, by the way, has a curiously-worded blurb for its Fellowship of the Red Bandanna, which is:
About men coming together in fellowship in a safe and comfortable environment … where we honour men for showing up, together strengthen one another as we stand up and pursue authentic, Christ centered relationships as we stay up.
Hat tip: Canuck Dave
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
March 29th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Q: What does a penis and the bible have in common?
A: They both get shoved down your throat by catholic priests.
March 29th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Parishioners Pass Peterborough Pastor’s Pathetic Petrol Proffer.
March 29th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Man, you’re good, BarrieJohn! I tussled all night for an amusing headline, and you just magic one up just like that. Grrr. But no comment on red bandannas?
March 29th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
If they’re inviting men to “stay up”, perhaps they should’ve offered Viagra instead of road fuel.
March 30th, 2010 at 12:46 am
When I was I minor, and my parents were shoving that shit down my throat, I would have given my left nut to escape, and now they think they can buy us back with a half tank of gas? I think I might buy in if they promised to dump it in the middle of their church and strike a match. You can bet you’d see it on youtube.
NeoWolfe
March 30th, 2010 at 1:22 am
According to their website, they believe (amongst other things):
“The Bible is the inspired Word of God, the product of men who spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. We accept the New Covenant, as recorded in the New Testament, as our infallible guide in matters of conduct and doctrine.”
As the New Testament also refers to the OT as infallible, that would make the entire book their infallible guide, including Genesis.
So, the question remains: what’s petrol made of?
March 30th, 2010 at 2:15 am
Forgive me, please. Off topic. I just, in my blatant ignorance, learned that Richard Wright, the keyboardist for Pink Floyd had passed away in 2008. The guy who could make a sythesizer sound like an orchesta, or a dog barking on the porch. You brits have given us the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Eric Burden and the Animals, Eric Clapton, and the Yardbirds. All of it excellent groundbreaking stuff, but, in my opinion, no one will ever touch Pink Floyd. So in a useless memorial that he can’t appreciate, I honor Richard Wright. I will miss him and his genius.
NeoWolfe
March 30th, 2010 at 8:01 am
Who the bloody hell do you think I am, Barry: Oscar Wilde?
@JohnMWhite: You are painfully ignorant about fundamentalists, if I may say so. Some time ago I was watching a TV documentary about the enormous environmental damage that is being caused by open-cast coal mining in the USA, and when one of the managers was asked whether it was right for us to extract the coal in this way, and use it the way that we do, when this is causing so much harm to the environment, his immediate response was: “Of course – that’s what God put it there for”!
March 30th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
I should’ve known. I really should have known.
March 30th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Glad to have been of service, John! I actually know fundamentalists, personally, who sincerely believe that God made the coal with all those little imprints in that look like leaves, and with some of it looking just like tree-trunks in structure, to test people’s faith, just as he put all the fossils in the ground, created rocks in apparent strata, and the whole of the earth’s surface with an apparently great age, for the very same purpose. What a wonderful God he is!!
March 30th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
NeoWolfe
Belatedly
“wish you were here”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXdNnw99-Ic
And comfortably numb
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkJNyQfAprY
March 31st, 2010 at 1:14 am
One wonders how many peoply would have showed up if they had offered, instead, a free petrel …
March 31st, 2010 at 4:15 am
Broadsword,
I thought I was going to end up apologizing for being off topic, and I really should, I guess. But, its good to meet a fellow fan. I guess as the people you admire die away, it reminds you of how the reaper is coming for us.
NeoWolfe