{"id":6992,"date":"2010-05-23T14:47:07","date_gmt":"2010-05-23T21:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=6992"},"modified":"2010-05-24T12:54:02","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T19:54:02","slug":"truth-is-stranger-than-fiction-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=6992","title":{"rendered":"Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction Department"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andy Pakula, minister of the Newington Green and Islington Unitarians in London, tells an interesting story in a recent blog post:<\/p>\n

I received a very interesting email the other day:<\/p>\n

“I am going to be in London over the summer with my girl friend Amy and we are interested in your fellowship. The issue is we are both people in the arts and grew up in conservative churches .. me Roman Catholic, she Protestant fundamentalist and we really got hurt. We found a Unitarian fellowship in America and this was healing for us both. Would we fit with you? We are ‘out there’ in terms of style. I (Chad) wear short skirts and tall boots and Amy goes bra-less and wears very very short dresses. We have been rejected in our home churches and wonder if we would be welcomed dressed as we are in your church. — Chad Bradford”<\/p>\n

The message came through the British Unitarian Association’s web site contact system. My intention was to contact these folks and find out more about them. There are certainly people who are biologically men and identify as women and I would and do welcome them completely. This didn’t sound like that at all though. The story seemed – well – more than a bit odd.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And if you read the rest of Andy’s post<\/a>, you’ll find out that the true story is indeed odd.<\/p>\n

You are welcome to leave your thoughts and comments as to the motivation behind all this. Is it someone baiting religious liberals as Andy contends? Is it an in-the-closet transgender Canon as some of Andy’s commenters imply? Or is it a combination of northern New England inbreeding and cabin fever, which I find plausible?<\/p>\n

See the first comment below: it’s all about Manny Ramirez!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy Pakula, minister of the Newington Green and Islington Unitarians in London, tells an interesting story in a recent blog post: I received a very interesting email the other day: “I am going to be in London over the summer with my girl friend Amy and we are interested in your fellowship. The issue is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[369],"tags":[308],"class_list":["post-6992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random","tag-baseball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6994,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6992\/revisions\/6994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}