I've written before that as Christians, despite what cultural Christianity or the religion of it all might imply, we are not to behave as the World does. Reminds me of Austin Powers, international man of intrigue, when he says, "Oh, be-have!" Anyway, left or right, conservative or liberal, the way society or politics deal with troubling issues and the ways people behave towards one another are not the ways we in the Church, "conservative" or "liberal," are to behave. We need one long, loud, and consistent, "Oh, be-have!"

Despite the claims of many, there has never been a single, consistent, or "handed-down-for-all-time" interpretation or understanding of scripture and its application. There has been an always occurring process as we go year to year, decade to decade, century to century trying to understand and apply scriptural principles to life as God intends. Certain understandings and interpretations have become "official" and carried forward, but before they became "official" they were enmeshed in controversy influenced by different cultures and the way the different cultures infused the various interpretations and application. The Creeds are examples of the process - centuries of process and progress. In new controversies will probably follow the same process - whether schism results or not.

Yet, the way we deal with each other is of primary importance and will mark the difference between Christians and non-Christians. We all have failed, terribly. During these recent years past we have failed the experience of Anglicanism, terribly. I have to ask myself how am I to deal with those with whom I disagree despite how they deal with me. How have I dealt with them? How do I take their concerns, their beliefs, their proclivities, what I consider to be their misunderstanding or mishandling of scripture, or their opposition of me and my beliefs - how do I deal with them all as Christ would deal with them - in honesty, in forthrightness, in sincerity, with compassion despite how I feel, with integrity?

The Archbishop of the Episcopal Church in Sudan, Daniel Deng Bul, during the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, addressed the issues of Gene Robinson and homosexuality in a rather long press conference. Here is the weblink to the videos of the press conferences. Listen to what he says - you will need to click on the reports on the ENS website separately.

Sudanese Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul addresses the media, Part 1 (07/22/08)

Sudanese Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul addresses the media, Part 2 (07/22/08)

There was a question asked by the Brazilian Episcopal Church press reporter concerning the place that cultural plays in the hermeneutical process of understanding scripture. The Archbishop replied:

"It is not the Bible that should be changed by the culture, but the Bible that should change the culture."

His opinions cannot be dismissed, nor can they be excused. If I want to wrestle with it all honestly and if I am to respect the dignity of every human being, then I must respect his dignity, his opinion, and deal with him in ways that move beyond identity-politics, political-correctness, therapeutic-models, or culturally derived impressions and influence - I must deal with him as a fallible human loved dearly by God in spite of my own proclivities and fallibility. How? I feel no animosity towards him, although I definitely think his is wrong and his interpretation of scripture and its application are damaging concerning our pressing issue(s). How do I live with him - even if he will not live with me? He has seen more trouble, oppression, danger, heartache than I can imagine, yet...

This thing, this being a Christian, is not easy. Sometimes is just sucks. Funny how some think it is just a crutch for weak-willed people.

We are a week into the Lambeth Conference - the once every 10 years conference of Anglican Bishops from around the world. Not all of the bishops are attending this conference - over 200 and some due to their belief that they cannot be in contact/communion with those they believe to be heretics or those who associate with such bishops.

The last Lambeth, I was all over it. Any bit of news or commentary I read. This time, I'm not. I think I am simply burned out on all the controversy, all the hypocrisy, all the misrepresentation and accusation, all the crap (a technical term, don't you know). I'm surprised. I think, "I need to read up on what is going on!" I start to, and then just get this feeling of not wanting to even begin.

I've followed the Facebook reports and blogs of friends of mine that are at Lambeth as workers and volunteers. Their impressions are great, as are their pictures. But the "hard news," really the selective reports of the regular ideological blogs, I just can't work up an interest.

Too bad. I've been praying for the bishops and for the Communion. I hope the Holy Spirit's influence will be allowed, present, perceptible, real in the experience of those involved.

As Lambeth gears up, the Bishop of New Hampshire preached at St. Mary's Church, Putney, in the south London-based Diocese of Southwark. There were two protestors, and one was a man in the service who attempted to shout down Bishop Robinson as he began his sermon. The following quote begins here from an ENS article entitled: Church need not be afraid, New Hampshire bishop tells Putney gathering.

Two demonstrators were also present, one carrying a placard outside the church and handing out leaflets saying the Bible prohibits homosexuality and one attempting in the church to shout down Robinson as he began his sermon.

Shouting "Repent! Repent!" the demonstrator was eventually drowned out by the congregation, which rose and sang..." He was escorted out by ushers.

"Pray for that man," resumed Robinson, his voice shaking slightly. "Fear is a terrible thing. How sad that the Anglican Communion would threaten to tear itself apart over two men or two women who choose to make a Christian family together."

Noting that several times in the New Testament, the words "be not afraid" and "fear not" appear, Robinson said "the Anglican Communion is going to be fine. Will it change? Probably. Is it going to be easy? Probably not."

Here is continuing description of Christianity as it is practiced in parts of Africa. I have no clue whether any Anglican Christians in Africa engage in any of this, but as I said before my hunch is that the Anglican Churches and their members in parts of Africa are influenced by these movements and practices, just as Anglicans in the West are influenced by their surrounding culture and by indigenous politics. The point, I guess, is that none of us are free of cultural influences - negatively and positively, conservatives or liberals, Evangelicals or Anglo-Catholics or Broad Church.

Dual Allegiance: Pastor jailed for using human head in occult ceremony.
Laurie Fortunak | posted 7/15/2008 08:44AM Christianity Today Online

Nigerian pastor Benjamin Ojobu and his wife, Patience, were arrested in May for allegedly using a human head in rituals for church members. The practice of using severed body parts to ensure prosperity—whether material, emotional, or spiritual—is not uncommon in West Africa. In a region where voodoo is culturally acceptable, nearly all Christians engage in some form of occult practice, according to some experts.

"One out of 10 self-named Christians in this region practices only Christianity," says Benjamin-Lee Hegeman, a former missionary in West Africa who now teaches at Houghton College. "Some people call it syncretism, but it may be more like dual religious allegiance, where Christianity is practiced in the daytime and occult [practice] is done at night. Many of the pastors will preach from the pulpit that this type of thing is wrong, but secretly take part in it at night. There is the mentality, especially in African Initiated Churches, where the prosperity gospel is preached, that you do what you've got to do to get ahead. You rely on the powers available to you. You are hopeful that Christ will help, but when he can't come through on Sunday, you may take out a different insurance policy at night."

The problem is when one grouping of us decides that the aspects of the prevailing culture that it takes upon itself or within itself (whether recognizing the influence or not) is God's very way in opposition to other ways other groups of Christians are influenced by the culture. There is not illusion on my part that some influences are bad and contrary to God's will for humanity and some influences are good, but we wade into troubled waters when we decide that we can definitively know the mind of God on all things right now and without opposing considerations as if we do not see through a glass darkly.

This is exactly the place Anglicanism finds itself, however. Certainly groups within us have determined that there can be no other understanding than theirs - and the group is lead by African Christians. I certainly believe they love Jesus and desire to live Christians lives, but how is the religion in their local context perceived and practiced? I can say the same about the religion of Christianity in the West... We are all wrong in various ways and to different degrees. This should be our first assumption!

The Archbishop of the Anglican Church in Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi, is afraid for his life. I remember reading a few years ago that due to the homosexual plague he suspended all his single, male priests until they were married in fear that they just might be homosexuals.

Now, it seems, he fears for his life. From an article in New Vision ("Uganda's Leading Website") entitled, "Gays want to kill me, says Orambi."

Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi yesterday said he fears for his life because of the campaign he has waged against homosexuals.

“Nowadays, I don’t wear my collar when I am in countries which have supporters of homosexuals,” he said...

“I am forced to dress like a civilian because those people are dangerous. They can harm anybody who is against them. Some of them are killers. They want to close the mouth of anybody who is against them.”

“Homosexuals are agitating that it is a human right. But how can it be a human right for a man to sleep with another man or a woman to marry a woman?” he asked.

“What we need is to wake up and protect our church and children against this practice.”

Orombi noted that homosexuals were trying to take advantage of Africa’s poverty by making donations, building schools and offering scholarships.

“We should not accept any donation that comes our way and has strings attached. Some people have already fallen victims in Uganda and we need to stop it,” the archbishop said.

Well, there you go.

A commenter to the story over on Thinking Anglicans wrote this:

"Gosh. This is such a difficult question. How many gays have been killed or beaten up by homophobes? And how many Africans have been murdered by gays for criticising Western gay lifestyles?"

So, what makes "religious right heads explode?" Read how the recent tax cuts that were supposed to boost our economy and create new jobs has had unanticipated consequences - as in spurring a increase in Internet porn usage.

From: Dispatches Form the Culture Wars - "Tax Cuts Help Porn Industry"

I just read today that "Father Jake Stops the World" is going off-line. Here are two reasons he mentioned for his reason to give up the blog:

1. I believe that a constant exposure to some of the toxic rhetoric found on the net has had a negative impact on my spiritual health. I find it more difficult to discern the glory of God. Most likely this is because I’ve become too preoccupied with the depravity of man. I need to take care of myself.

2. I’m no longer sure that our conversations here are helpful to the Episcopal Church. We have become as polarized in our responses as those with whom we disagree. The reality is that we are all children of God. There is no “us” and “them.” There is only “we.” I honestly believe that. Continuing to focus on our divisions deepens them, and provides a poor witness to the hope that is in us.

I really can't help but agree with him. I know I have to step back from engaging people on the more political Church blogs. It does bring me down. I suspect it can be a downward spiraling endeavor, too.

I've witnessed a number of amateur bloggers hang-up-their-hats over the last several years. For whatever reason, the individuals have decided that this medium no longer suits them or meets a greater need - perhaps their individual need for blogging has ended.

More often than not in these extremist and polarizing times, "conversations" are maintained in the blogsphere because of anger and angst, bitterness and bile, and it all feeds upon itself. It is not, as it is currently construed, healthy or ultimately helpful.

I think about why people stop blogging. I guess it depends on why they blogged in the first place or the use they saw for their blogs. For me, I suppose, and as I mention in my disclaimer concerning grammar and spelling, I really do use this "web space" as a place to put things I want to keep track of. Since I am a person who wrestles with stuff by thinking "out loud," it provides me a place to put down thoughts.

I don't intend for all this to be "public," but the medium provides me the best way to keep track of life and of necessity it is public. I appreciate the few who do add comments. I appreciate people who challenge what I write - it helps in my "out loud" process of consideration concerning whatever I'm wrestling with at the time. But, I don't do any of this to elicit comments. I don't post to advance an agenda. I just do it for myself. I don't care how many hits or page-views I get in a day.

Perhaps that's why after eight years of on-line journaling and then blogging, I don't feel any need or want to stop at this point. I feel as if to stop would be the same as no longer writing in my paper journal - where I write my more personal stuff.

I think it is kind of sad when a blogger who gathers a regular group of people stops. I perfectly well understand why someone would stop, but it feels like a person who in the tactile world just drops off the face of the earth. I will remove the link in my sidebar for "Father Jakes Stops the World." The blog was part of the Anglican perspective.

This isn't necessarily a personal observation, but the experience of a parent (Christoph Niemann, artist) and his boys on the NYC subway. It is very cute, and there really is something about trains and boys.

The Boys and the Subway

(Drawing by Christoph Niemann)

HT: Sarah at the caffeinated priest

What do we make of our government (current administration) when "God fearing" and "God loving" leaders allow such things to happen? This is a betrayal of America, in the name of saving America.

From the New York Times: China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

This from Andrew Sullivan:

So Reagan's alleged heir came to follow the moral strictures of Communist totalitarians. And note: the torture methods were designed to elicit false confessions. We have no assurance that the intelligence conjured up by this brutality is anything more than what Dick Cheney wanted it to be. (That's how he likes his intelligence, of course. Whatever he wants reality to be.)

But one thing is at least clear. The people who committed this form of "enhanced interrogation" knew full well it was torture. And they used that word. It's a good one. And it means what it says.

A good essey written on Anglicans Online by The Rt Revd Pierre W. Whalon, Bishop in Charge of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe on what is needed beyond Lambeth. The good bishop provides a good overview of some of the distinctive aspects of Anglicanism that are worthy of preservation, even if under great strain right now.

The essay: Peering Past Lambeth

I was thinking more about the whole "being a radical" thing. I am obviously fairly conventional in many ways, yet simply being a Christian is a radical departure from American cultural norms from the beginning.

So much of the religion of Christianity has capitulated to the culture - and here the conservatives are as much if not more guilty of this than are the liberals (at least in the West and most notably in America) . Part of the difference between the two equally guilty parties is that the conservatives are often blind to the capitulation or which parts of the culture they have given themselves to - frankly, what often happens is they take a culture norm and sanctify it and call it God's will, like free-market economics for example. Certainly nothing wrong with free-market economics, but it certain isn't the dictate of God that this is His divine plan or will for humankind. From my experience, at least liberals don't make any excuses for being like the surrounding culture. Speaking of excuses, what I like about many conservatives is their honesty about their sense of personal, cultural, ethnic, economic, or "systems" superiority - you know where you stand. My experience suggests that liberals have a hard time admitting to their own sense of superiority, like conservatives have a hard time admitting to their own capitulation to the culture.

Anyway, with even a cursory reading of the New Testament, one can't come away without realizing that the way Jesus calls us to life and to live is very contrary to the prevailing cultural - religious and secular. Jesus calls us to a peculiar life, a radical departure from the norm. This is the way it is, unless we simply want to justify ourselves and our ways of living.

We are to be in the world, but not of it. We are to let our example be a light to help a lost world find its way, but if our lives simple blend into the context of everything else then there is no distinction, no difference, no different light to recognize and follow. This is why it is so tragic when the Church, Christians, and the religion become indistinguishable from the prevailing culture. We would rather trust the culture than the Way of Christ. Understandable, perhaps, due to fear and insecurity, but lamentable all the same.

Live a radical life, for the sake of the world and the people in it.

John Kampfner of the Guardian (UK) writes about: The new authoritarianism. He asks the question, "Why is it that a growing number of highly educated and well-travelled people are willing to hand over several of their freedoms in return for prosperity or security?"

This question can be asked as well of Americans! From the commentary:

Many countries, including our own [Britain], are entering into new pacts with their rulers. Resurgent autocrats draw strength from the many weaknesses of western leaderships, not just their mistakes in foreign policy, but their failure to rejuvenate their own political systems, or to deal with a business culture that had lost touch with the needs of society.

It was Oswald Spengler who at the turn of the last century predicted that "the masses will accept with resignation the victory of the Caesars, the strong men, and will obey them".

A modern form of authoritarianism, quite distinct from Soviet Communism, Maoism or Fascism, is being born. It is providing a modicum of a good life, and a quiet life, the ultimate anaesthetic for the brain. (emphasis mine)

Caron, who commented on the "Prosperity Gospel" in a post from yesterday, added a link to the website of Justin Peters who conducts seminars on the "Word of Faith" movement, which encompasses the prosperity teaching. I think he does a decent job in his overview. I particularly like his differentiation between those in the "Word of Faith/Prosperity Gospel" movement and mindful Charismatics. Peters is a Southern Baptist, and generally speaking Southern Baptists are not too keen on things Charismatic/Pentecostal. Certainly, not all Charismatics or Pentecostals subscribe to the "Word of Faith/Prosperity Gospel."

Here is the link to Justin Peter's website. Click on "Watch a demo of Justin's Seminar" to see a video of a presentation he gave as an overview of his seminar.

As I said below, we need to recognize the influence these groups have on Anglican thought and practice in Africa and other parts of the world. This theological and experiential perspective predominates within much of the explosive growth of Christianity in Africa. While African Anglicanism may be of this one kind of expression of Charismatic-Evangelicalism, they cannot but be influenced by the phenomena and its influence on the general culture within the different nations of Africa.

Believe it or not, there has always be a "radical" streak in me. Early on when doing campus ministry right out of college, the pastor of the church through which I did ministry, a friend, would always tell me that I'm rebellious.

I like this:

I particularly like the, "With the theology of empire... We will not comply." I made a post a while back that I will not subscribe as an American to Empire, even while those leaders in the present government and ideology are bent on attempting to create an American Empire.

The Ordinary Radicals

Merging Lanes

One thing to consider concerning the African Anglican provinces and their conceptualization of the expression of the Christian faith beyond their creation by Anglican-Evangelical missionary societies is this: perhaps the greatest growth in numbers of Christians of both indigenous and foreign denominations in Africa is among the very American “Prosperity Gospel” organizations. Within the South American context, American Pentecostals and Charismatic denominations and organizations predominate. American missionary endeavors have been very, very successful, even in influencing non-Evangelical or non-Pentecostal/Charismatic churches. These dynamic and explosive movements cannot help but influence Anglicanism within African and South American provinces, particularly when many Africans see themselves as being in competition with Islam. This seems as culturally bound on their own part as is their accusation that Northern Hemisphere or “Western” Anglicans have capitulated to the same culture concerning homosexuality.

I think we can see the influence in the very Evangelical leanings of the GAFCON statement, particularly in its denial of the centrality of the See of Canterbury as being essential to true Anglican identity. In their formulation of Anglicanism, it ceases being a “Church Catholic” and becomes just another “Protestant denomination” that follows Anglican liturgical norms. This new denomination will be predominately Charismatic and American-Evangelical and if Anglo-Catholics are tolerated, it will be only a shallow toleration.

Their insistence on following the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 (very Protestant) and especially the Thirty-Nine Articles (not only quite Protestant, but quite Calvinist/Reformed) make this move even more apparent.

Someone commented on the posting of the Jerusalem Declaration by Ruth Gledhill of the TimesOnline (UK) that, “This is the Oxford Movement in reverse… which wanted to get back to the 1549 [BCP].” and “There are so many holes in this document, and so much self deception… it is hard to believe that this forms a credible basis for unity and orthodoxy. It avoids key areas...and is a mockery of the 39 articles, when it includes bishops who openly repudiate the injunctions in the articles.”

The titled of Gledhill’s piece is: “A very ‘Anglican’ schism.”

I don’t see traditionalist Anglo-Catholics lining up to follow this new denomination-in-the-making, despite their agreement on many things moral and Scriptural. But, when groups have a common enemy and scapegoat upon which to focus, it often breeds strange bed-fellows.

Dan Martin writes good stuff about all this.

Finally, this one line from the Gafcon final statement kind of amazes me:

“We can only come to the devastating conclusion that ‘we are a global Communion with a colonial structure.’”

Aside from that, in my mind “colonialism” necessitates forced acceptance of “stuff” from the colonizing entity upon the indigenous society. This has absolutely not happened! If it had, the “Western” provinces would be insisting that the “Global South” provinces accept our culture, our standards, and the stand taken by a majority of Anglican members in these provinces that homosexuals may well be brought into the structures of the Church without violating a more correct understand of the Scriptures. No one or no province has done this. Within the historical structures of Anglicanism, no one could. This is the difference between the old, historical Anglican Communion and the new “Anglican” organization that is developing. The new organization will impose itself upon all the provinces under it’s domain. It may truly be a world denomination, but it will be one more akin to the Church of Rome than the Anglican Communion.

Text of the Final Gafcon Statement

I preached a sermon yesterday from the Old Testament (we are in the process of switching to the Revised Common Lectionary, but yesterday the reading was still from the BCP Lectionary - Isaiah 2:10-17). I preached on haughtiness and pride and the trouble it gets us into.

I read the final statement from the "Global Anglican Future Conference" (GAFCON) in Jerusalem . It was expected that this conference would set the stage for actual development of an alternative international Anglican organization/Church, and while the statement states that they are not leaving the Anglican Communion they have in fact embarked on such a path if we take historical Anglican structures to be the rule.

Haughtiness and pride (perhaps hubris and vainglory are better terms) will always win-the-day when ideology (whether political, social, or theological) becomes the god unto which we give ourselves. Among the leadership of those Anglican provinces and organizations that insist on pushing their notion of “correctness” based on identity-politics and political-correctness (dressed up in the language of social-justice) regardless of the outcomes and also those provinces and organizations that demand strict adherence to a particular form of the faith and the capitulation of all to a particular Scriptural interpretation and moral perspective (dressed up in language “reform” or of purity of devotion and theology), among these groups their social and theological ideology blinds them. Vainglory, pride, haughtiness rule because humility requires admitting that each of us and our understandings and our organizations could be wrong and that we all need to compromise. Anglican comprehensiveness is defeated by the results of the attitudes and actions of both groups, both sides, both perspectives.

No one wins, despite their want to believe so. The cause of Christ always looses. Our faith is a faith that rests on relationship – our relationship with God as we strive to love God with all of our hearts, all of our minds, and all of our souls. It rests on relationships as we strive, with God’s help, to love our neighbors as ourselves. When we descend to defining the faith only by our pet creeds, tenants, or declarations, we deny the essence of what Jesus did – he restored the possibility of relationship. He didn’t create a new religion. We did.

Read more here:

Ruth Gledhill from the TimesOnline gives us, “Gafcon: a longer look.”

Guardian UK by Riazat Butt:
Conservative Anglicans form breakaway church in revolution led from the south

Conservative Anglicans form global network

GAFCON attendees run smack dab into the Jerusalem Gay Pride march.

Ian Baster for the Lesbian & Gay Christian Movement (UK)

BBC: Anglicans seeking tradition faced with Gay Pride

But to the evident consternation of the organisers of the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon) they had travelled all this way to the Christian Holy City only to find the streets taken over by Jerusalem Gay Pride.

...back at the conference hotel contingency plans were being laid to contend with any gay raiding party sent out to beard the traditionalists in their redoubt.

I heard it said a while ago that Gen X is the first generation to draw meaning from popular-culture. I believe it.

Dr. Andrew Root, professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota and a LOST geek, has written an article about LOST, a theory that might explain what is actually going on, and God/Jesus and God's work.

The article appears on the website, Next Wave: Church & Culture, a website that seems to cater to more Emergent types. The article is entitled, "The TV Show Lost and Eschatology."

I listen to part of a press conference this afternoon/morning from GAFCON. Archbishops Venerables and Jensen were the "panel" to which questions from the media were directed. I hear and read a lot from Venerables and Jensen these days, but little from Akinola.

Riazat Butt, the religion writer from the Guardian (UK), writes a very interesting article entitled, "At Gafcon, who calls the shots?" asking why white, Westerners now seem to be the public face of GAFCON when this was supposed to have been Akinola's and Africans' day. I think this observation and her questions carry weight, primarily because Butt is a she, non-white, non-Christian (she is Muslim), and with difficulty can be dismissed as simply a "white, male, Westerner" being all "colonial" towards the "diminished" rest-of-the-world.

She writes:

It was Canon Vinay Samuel, from India, who accused Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury of not trusting the intelligence of developing churches. The situation is hardly any better at Gafcon, where white conservatives are slowly but surely calling the shots and squeezing their African brothers out of the picture.

The eight-day gathering... was set to be the Archbishop Peter Akinola show, until his unfortunate use of the word apostate had the more media savvy prelates cringing into their prayer books.

The explanation given was that Akinola came from a different cultural context and didn't fully understand the impact of what he was saying. The same explanation was given for the African archbishops' silence on acts of torture.

Akinola, previously described as a luminary of the conservative movement, has now been hidden away until Sunday afternoon...

Gafcon has not been the first time that western clergy have stepped in on behalf of the African primates. Where does interpretation stop and manipulation start? There are concerns over the way the African archbishops project themselves and such a guiding hand is, at best, good public relations and, at worse, patronising. If these men are held in such high regard then they should speak in their own words, without any help."

Now, the apparent gulf of difference between Western and African culture and sensibilities are becoming more and more apparent. The white, male, Western anti-same-sex-relationship bishops and leadership are re-asserting themselves because the culturally-different, straight forward, and uncompromising statements by some of the Global South primates/bishops and leaders won't really fly in the West, thus weakening the Westerners' overall position in their home provinces.

She continues:

In the fateful press conference – regarding torture – Akinola said that what was permissible in one culture was not permissible in another, without realising that same-sex unions have become the norm in western society and should therefore be accommodated in the same way that discriminatory legislation and treatment of homosexuals are par for the course in some African countries.

If the white bishops can turn a blind eye to polygamy and persecution then surely the courtesy should be returned. Gafcon is heading for a clash of civilisations, with the northern and southern hemispheres each trying to assert their superiority. And that's before you get to the rumour about Gafcon being a done deal months ago, with little or no Nigerian input, or the rivalries between the Nigerians and Ugandans, with them trying to out-do each other when praying.

I had forwarded to me, by my friend Anthony, an article (commentary) by George Pitcher in the Telegraph (UK) concerning comments made by the good Canon I mentioned in a previous post. Pitcher was not pleased with the Canon's estimation of the world and the Church.

Here are a couple examples from the article:

Meanwhile... Virtueonline... declares that it is "the height of western Anglican arrogance to perpetuate the myth that the West holds sway over the communion.

"That day is long gone along with the Elizabethan Settlement and the British Empire.

"A new global Anglican Communion day is dawning and its strength is coming from new global quarters."

So this conference of Anglican dissenters is not about homosexuality at all... Nor is it really about Biblical authority...

It is simply about where the locus of Anglican authority should reside. And it is driven by a post-colonial political imperative; the West has used and abused the Global South and now it’s pay-back time.

In this worldview, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is a “relic” (Canon Samuel’s word) of old empire, who must be replaced, presumably by the likes of Archbishop Akinola...

This presumes that Dr Williams is a political leader to be overthrown by an official opposition. He is nothing of the sort... The Archbishop of Canterbury is primus inter pares in the worldwide Anglican Communion, holding together (or trying to) a loose federation of global churches, often at odds with one another but on a common journey."

Difference in belief is not good, in this way of thinking. God has established one Truth that is discernible in all ways and for all times without question, and to question is to repudiate and doubt. Does history bare this out? Funny thing is, they want to hold onto the "old, tried, and true" systems of thinking, believing, and doing when it comes to issues of morality or theology or praxis, but want to jettison the "old, tried, and true" when it comes to issues of governance, authority, and relationships - even in the "old" idea that the validity of the Sacraments do not depend on the celebrant's human condition. Is this another example of the shift in the way we deal with Truth seen between the Modernist and Post-Modernist systems?

If there is opposition to their dictates from the "West" (which includes provinces and bishops in Africa, Asia, South American, and other parts of the "Global South") it is because of... what? heresy, apostasy, capitulation to the heathen, pagan culture, Satan's deception, and on and on.

These are convenient charges that sound very politically correct. Isn't that strange?

WELL, we go on fighting within the world's third largest expression of the religion of Christianity. All the while, this comment posted to the article sums up what I imagine most people think (if they even know anything about what is going on):

Reading this reminded me of why I consider the CoE to be a complete irrelevance. I can just about "get" Roman Catholicism, although I am not a member of that Church...

At the moment, it happens to be divided by a bitter internal feud, and its members have fallen into the common error of thinking that if they feel strongly about their feud, it must represent important issues.

The fact is, however, that like a feuding family, it is only those inside the feud who think it important while the rest of us look on in bemusement, wondering what all the fuss is about.

What's amazing to me is how many of your readers, on either side, seem to imagine that this feud has any significance at all in the wider world. The spats between my pet cats make more sense to me that this nonsense.
Posted by... on June 26, 2008 11:07 PM