I don't know about a postmodern approach in TEC, but if so the other side has a premodern (but affected by the modern) approach and that's as much of a problem given the complexity of contemporary culture and identities.

As for the battle, well they don't even agree on the questions so it is going to be interesting to see who and how matters will be decided in September or October. Presumably it will be Lambeth Palace, which means more on the lines of the Sub-group and draft Covenant, so if TEC gives answers according to its understanding of the questions, it will be Nigeria that goes walkies and perhaps the exercise will do them some good.

AGVenables asks - Are we a church or just a group of people calling themselves Anglicans? And in so doing reveals the entire gestalt undergirding this current unpleasantness. The desire to create a global denomination on a par with the Roman Catholics and Orthodox complete with it's own controlling polity and doctrine. The AC is not a church. Whatever response TEC fashions to the Communique, it is best to not to help this beast come into being.

C.B.

Interesting to note that Anglican Mainstream cannot even bother to spell Bishop Sisk's name coreectly.

Following an introduction that seriously misrepresents the present situation, Roger Bolton allows Gregory Venables to deliver a one minute statement - no questions to the archbishop, no answers from him. This is followed by a four minute interview, totally different in tone, in which Bolton peppers Mark Sisk with questions, almost all value-loaded from a conservative standpoint, clearly working to maneuver Sisk into a "gottcha!" situation. Given the number of unauthorized gay blessings reported to be occurring within the C of E, attempting to nail bishop Sisk on the question of whether or not similar unauthorized blessings are conducted in ECUSA, seems to me pretty hypocritical. Hardly the BBC "impartiality" that one was raised to revere. Does Mr. Bolton habitually take political stands in his interviews? I have been too long out of the UK to be familiar with his technique.

And congratulations and thanks to Katharine Jefferts Schori for her observation that there are “a few neuralgic places in the Communion that have discovered that this [homosexuality] is their defining issue – I think with encouragement from some people in our own Church” .

Jimmy - you are right. And everybody spells Veneballs correctly!

The point of almost every realignment post I have read, or interview I have heard, or position position paper published - is that the Anglican Communion must achieve some new police powers above all else that will identify and inhibit alternative thinking about any important doctrine, as defined by the Anglican right egged on by the USA right - which is much larger, actually, and quite willing to be beastly to those who get in its way. There is actually nothing much new in the conservative foundations laid for the purities or conformities that must be defended, but having a church police will be new if the realignment folks get all that they say they want and need to live in good conscience. We just do not yet know who the Anglican Top Cop will be after the realignment has done its work.

Lapinbizarre, that's how Fox News [sic] here in the U.S. always operates.

Let's say that they have George W. Bush and one of his critics on.

First, they won't be on together, because Georgie Boy never goes anywhere someone might disagree with him. But anyway, the Fox News [sic] anchor will ask Bush something along the lines of, "How does it feel to know that God Himself chose you to lead the world into His Kingdom?"

In the next segment, the Bush critic will be asked, "Why do you hate God and America? I bet you hate your mother, too, don't you?"

Sorry to hear that the BBC has been infected with Murdochism.

"the post modern version in which you really create your own ideas using Christian language but with a different content."

This still catches me on the raw. You would think I would be used to it by now. After reading that phrase I told my son that, yep, I stayed up all last night creating my own ideas and figuring out how to put them into Christian language so they would sound legitmate. And then I preached the scriptures (the ones I apparently don't read or use) in church this morning.

C.B.
Thank you. We are members of our own parish churches...hopefully aware of the Diocese's aims and strategy and vaguely informed about what General Synod decides about things. Period. Plus we (used to) pray for sister churches to which we have never belonged nor intend to in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer. The takeover of the 'Anglican Communion' is a project of the so called (by fellow evangelicals) the Hizbollah wing of evangelicalism. Sadly their anti gay rhetoric is causing scandal in Britain. Rowan appears not to have caught up...but...watch this space for the reaction...

Let's examine this postmodern point a bit further. Because I am a postmodernist and happy to admit it involves some creativity.

Over on Fulcrum they like to point out that their Anglicanism in the UK has world class theologians, such as Wright, McGrath and O'Donovan. When I did my MA course in 1998, they didn't appear for a second. Perhaps they are more recent. Anglican theology was seen as denominational, and English theology a bywater. Theologians worth studying were American and German, and the only English Anglican theologian to make any impact was John Milbank, of Cambridge, who promotes Radical Orthodoxy.

Radical Orthodoxy is like a rebirth of Christendom and it is postmodern! Postmodernism itself has a conservative and liberal side. The Conservative side comes in two main strands, revelatory performance or cultural criticism: one is the biblical drama narrative of Hans Frei, with the performance of ecumenical doctrine of George Lindbeck. John Milbank is the theology of Church strand, who also dismisses objectivity in contemporary culture, because now culture has a secular theology. So he uses postmodernism to create a bubble inside which he almost becomes premodern. (The criticism of this is social science research method is a disciplined anchor for drawing results about the present condition; he builds a fantasy not a challenge.)

So when these pontificating bishops make soundbite comments, they might investigate further. There is a liberal postmodernism too, as with Mark C. Taylor, where God dies into writing, and again Don Cupitt in England didn't get a mention and nor did the equivalent (Presbyterian) Lloyd Geering in New Zealand (who has a revered status there). This liberal postmodernism is both a response to pluralism and the poststructural nature of language when applied to religion (like Baudrillard). I'm here, theologically - a freer, art-based, creative position, working in and around a tradition. TEC might have only a minority like this.

Thanks for the gloss, JPM. For the benefit of our UK readership, you might have noted that the correct spelling of the name of the cable chanel is "Faux News". And you're right, if it is a trait at BBC religion - and I suspect and hope that it is not (now that I have the link, I'll check back on Roger Bolton from time to time) - it would be a great pity.

If you didn't study Wright, McGrath and O'Donovan, I suggest you ask for your money back. Although it does depend on what you were studying, if you didn't look at biblical studies (Wright), Systematics and historical theology (McGrath), or policital theology (O'Donovan), but focused exclusively on philosophical theology I can understand not looking at them, but such a narrow focus is perhaps another indication that you should have your money back.

OF course you are right, if you study theology, you will be studying Germans. But even there you will be turned to Britain, on the philosophy end you will have to be studying Hobbes, and on the theological side, the whole Torrance family.

"Over on Fulcrum they like to point out that their Anglicanism in the UK has world class theologians, such as Wright, McGrath and O'Donovan. When I did my MA course in 1998, they didn't appear for a second. Perhaps they are more recent. Anglican theology was seen as denominational, and English theology a bywater."

Well, that probably tells us something about your school, Pluralist. All three have been established writers since 1990 and before ('Resurrection and Moral Order' appearing in 1986). Already in the 1990 Bampton lectures ('The Genesis of Doctrine'), McGrath was taking Lindbeck to task. Wright's 'The Climax of the Covenant' appeared in 1991 and was programmatic for his magna opera.
The sharpest undermining of postmodernist assumptions comes from Kevin Vanhoozer, an expert in Ricoeur and formerly teaching at Edinburgh University, now teaching in the US. 'Is there a Meaning in This Text?' and 'First Theology' are two very profound works on revelation and language that tackle Fish etc, following on from Thiselton ('New horizons in hermeneutics').

Pluralist wrote: "Over on Fulcrum they like to point out that their Anglicanism in the UK has world class theologians, such as Wright, McGrath and O'Donovan. When I did my MA course in 1998, they didn't appear for a second. Perhaps they are more recent. Anglican theology was seen as denominational, and English theology a bywater."

Steve Watson answered: "Well, that probably tells us something about your school, Pluralist."

Now we are at it again. Tedious games of dismissing, rejecting, denying.

Pluralist just told you Steve Watson that your house gods Wright, McGrath, Donovan and so on are not as famous as you think. They are even quite un-known in several corners of the world.

Why can you not accept this? Why do you have to kill the messenger?

My only encounter with Tom Wright (not yet NT ;=) at University was his 1986 addition to Bishop Neill's The Interpretation of the New Testament.

I might add, that I would never consider anyone who recommends Robert AJ Gagnon to the House of Bishops as either "established" or "outstanding" or even a "scholar".

Goran, as I've said, I know almost nothing about Swedish theology apart from Viberg and Bostrom. But in theological circles in the billion-strong Anglosphere, Wright, O'Donovan (formerly of Oxford) and McGrath (professor of Historical Theology at Oxford) are very well known - Wright and McGrath especially in the US, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Pluralist, I think, studied in the UK, and James Crocker answered the question better than I.
In the English-speaking world, McGrath's books are basic texts in almost all undergraduate theological studies on the Reformation and the history of doctrine, while his studies on the relation between science and religion stand alongside Torrance and others. Wright's work is fundamental to any study of the (not so) 'New Perpective' on Paul, as well as the Synoptics. His 1986 piece was just an updating appendix to Neill's book, which looked at NT studies 1861-1961. He has written vastly more original stuff since. No doubt there are people stuck on old Bultmannian paradigms, but that stuff is no longer read in the Anglosphere.

Steve Watson, you're not paying attention.

First: Viberg and Broström are no more Swedish Theology than poor dear Philosophically challenged Philo of the Alexandrian Museiwn ever was Jewish Theology.

Secon: Both Pluralist and I told you that your house gods Wright, McGrath, Donovan and so on are not as famous as you think. They are even quite un-known in several corners of the world.

Why can't you simply acknowledge this?