The New Orleans Times-Picayune has reports by Bruce Nolan:
Top Anglicans in N.O. for meetings and later
Discord put aside to pray for N.O.’s healing.
The Washington Post has Anglican Leader Urges Church To Find Accord Amid Turmoil by Michelle Boorstein and Jacqueline Salmon.
The Boston Globe has Episcopal bishops, archbishop seek a middle ground by Michael Paulson.
Associated Press has Meeting Held on Anglican-Episcopal Split by Rachel Zoll.
Reuters has Episcopals reveal little of gay rift talks by Bruce Nichols.
Episcopal News Service has two reports:
House of Bishops sessions reflect ‘passionate commitment’ to Anglican Communion
Archbishop of Canterbury gets a taste of New Orleans
In the midst of this current ‘crisis’, with its accusations of apostacy and proclamations of orthodoxy, I can’t help but be reminded of some words by Ken Leech in ‘Subversive Orthodoxy’: “I want to suggest that there are two ways of looking at orthodoxy, and here I want to draw on some ideas…by Rowan Williams. The first view sees orthodoxy as a closed system, determined, watertight, a package, a comprehensive ideology, total, complete. We are programmed by it, captured by it, imprisoned within it. It stifles thought and distorts perception. Within its confines no real conversation is possible, and self-scrutiny… Read more »
What a very helpful and illuminating post from MJ toay. I will want to digest it and let it inform my thinking & doing,dv…
MJ – It is a very fine post. But holding something in tension implies that there is something in the middle, between two poles. While I completely agree, the question remains who, how and where the two poles are set. By tradition? Who declares what the tradition is? I think reasserters feel that TEC has lost this tension, because it has moved the poles too close to together – and there lies the heresy.
“…[W]hat is often mistaken for orthodoxy today is in fact what orthodox thinkers of the past saw as heresy” But those who use the word of themselves are the ones who decide that everything else is heretical. So, it doesn’t matter that for nearly 2000 years there has been a thing called “Orthodoxy”. All that matters is that someone can use the word of themselves now to describe what they believe. Many of these “orthodox”, for instance, would have great difficulty with the veneration of icons. They have 500 year old grudges against Rome, so anything that looks Roman is… Read more »
“think reasserters feel that TEC has lost this tension, because it has moved the poles too close to together – and there lies the heresy.”
Interesting point, one that bears much thought.
Can I commend to everyone’s careful and prayerful perusal this comment by the Bishop of Buckingham. There’s a lot of much-needed common sense and insight here.
http://bishopalan.blogspot.com/2007/09/ignorant-armies-clash-by-night-or.html
And Bruce Robison’s article on Covenant is well worth attention:
http://covenant-communion.com/?p=160
Great posting MJ “…reasserters feel that TEC has lost this tension, because it has moved the poles too close to together – and there lies the heresy…” It’s funny, but I thought the problem was that they thought things were being stretched too far, that the standards were becoming too lenient, that grace was being made too accessible to too many souls at too many levels. I can remember one exchange where one poster expressed a concern that things were becoming too complicated. My reply at the time is that our theology is actually less complicated because it advocates covering… Read more »
Cheryl -If there are no standards there can be no tension. If things are stretched too far things snap and there is no tension either. Hence the importance of where the poles are placed.
Hi C.B. Evolution involves both quantitative changes (e.g. a bird’s beak and tongue getting longer to best reach the pollen in a flower) and qualitative changes (e.g. the transformation of a dinosaur into a flying bird with feathers). Nature is mostly steady-state systems. A rainforest has an inbuilt tolerance to cope with a typical amount of rain in a typical pattern. That ecosystem might become fragile if the rain was to become more erratic, or collapse if the variations go too far for too long. But does that mean life would end? There might be a mass extinction, but unless… Read more »