A feature of the past year and the coming year(s) is the place of the blog and website right at the centre of Anglican divisions. I suggest so to folks in Lincoln, if this submission is accepted (and of course the web means it is available long before it appears in print, and even if it doesn't).

http://www.change.freeuk.com/learning/relthink/crosslincsblogs.html

The Anglicans Communion is intact now -- is it ?

I thought we had been told over n over that its 'fabric' had been torn irreparably ?

(I always knew it has no 'fabric' to 'tear'. Unlike people...)

George Conger, as a professional journalist, is usually careful in his use of words: however, his own standards slip with his description of the Archbishop of Canterbury's two month study leave in 2007 (writing a major book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky) and one month holiday as 'a three month vacation'. This is not accurate journalism - perhaps there will be a correction published?

He has now corrected the impression of his first article in the Jerusalem Post on GAFCON, 31 December 2007, which was entitled 'Anglicans Choose Jerusalem for Key June Conference':

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1198517248310

It was headlined on Anglican Mainstream as 'Jerusalem Post Welcomes GAFCON':

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/index.php/2007/12/30/jerusalem-post-welcomes-gafcon/#more-2635

and as 'Jerusalem Post on GAFCON' on the GAFCON site:

http://www.gafcon.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=1

He seems now to have had second thoughts on the very one-sided nature of the article in a very complex context, and has written a second article for the Jerusalem Post, 3 January 2008:

'Regional Anglicans fear Jerusalem conference could 'inflame tensions'

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1198517289975&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Interestingly, this second article has not been mentioned at all on either the Anglican Mainstream site, or on the GAFCON site.

It is a severe embarrasment to GAFCON.

Embarassing things don't go up on some sites, and if they do they disappear and are swept under the carpet as if they never existed.

Just like they have done to the prophets and victims of abuse.

The removal of the book of Susanna brings shame to any priest who condones its removal: it gave a precedent to protect parishioners from abusive collusive priests.

Praise be to the internet. They might purport that such souls don't exist, but such souls now have a means of demonstrating that they do. In trying to silence and deprive us of a safe parishes, communities, workplaces or homes; they merely prove they are no better than previous priesthoods that God has rebuked for exactly the same sins.

L Roberts --

Whether the WWAC is intact depends on what "is" "is" -- from The Church Times
The Revd Dr Mark Chapman, editor of a forthcoming Affirming Catholicism publication on the Anglican Covenant, and vice-principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon, said: “The emphasis given in the current proposals to the Primates’ Meeting

. . . downplays the importance of synods. There is something disingenuous about giving power to determine membership of the Communion and to decide what constitutes the ‘common mind’ of the Churches to a group who at the moment refuse even to share eucharistic communion with each other.”
http://churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=41567

Prior

I must comment that the politics we are seeing at a Primate level is merely a fractal pattern of what has been going on in some synods in some dioceses for some time.

It's just that "under the carpet" sweeping thing has kept the dirtiness of the politics out of public view.

Obadiah is God's succinct rebuke those "wise men" who thought they could gloat over others' suffering and participate in the carnage of destruction and vilification.

Cheryl Va. Clough --
I haven't a clue as to what has gone on in synods -- that remark was a quotation from Mark Chapman -- the point that struck me is that the primates are already not in Communion (the choice of a minority) & it is bizarre to suggest that this broken group should determine the status of the Communion.