Sensationalist journalism.

The camp that wants "war" can make that manifest.

That will lead to criminal charges in "civilized" societies.

Those countries that "allow" their religious leaders to wage "war" without accountability merely prove the bankruptcy of both their priests and their ethos.

Jesus promised gentleness to the Daughter of Zion; and that he was healing the sick, raising the dead and binding up the broken hearted to John the Baptist.

Jesus is a man of his word or he isn't.

Souls bent on tyranny and global genocide are hardly making manifest the covenant of peace.

I agree this is an issue which needs calming down and debating properly. Arguments based on feelings of exclusion or traditional understandings will not do. We need to return to the Scriptures in prayer and use our minds in submission to the Holy Spirit to find a way forward.

I would love to engage with others in such a discussion, but it always seems to descend into emotive mud-slinging, and those who would argue theologically never get heard for long.

So it's all that relativism and liberalism that have taught us Americans (at least my generation and the ones preceding it) to do good if we've done well.

Not all of that money from the U.S. is blameless and the "dark side" as Canon Cameron calls it, knows it (and benefits from it).

The liberals may carry about themselves with an air of superiority, but that hardly warrants tearing a church selfishly apart,-e.g. engaging the laity in divisive tactics through separate meetings held across the globe. The liberals may be guilty of some "goofy" liturgical quirks (that can be both maddening and alienating), but their message of God's unconditional love is flawless. The "dark side's" obsession with retribution, judgmental certainty, and outright fear demonstrates a deep lack of faith in God, not to mention a questionable preoccupation with sex.

Heresy may be an unpleasant topic, but schism is a far greater sin, and ultimately the dark side needs to wake up and realize this fact.

What on God's good Earth has NATO got to do with it?

Hate to be cynical sounding, but.

Yes all the complicated and varied intellectual issues need to be debated, most often using best practice tools and frameworks, not the least of which is our considering the slow but sure building evidence from empirical hypothesis testing - in this case about our fav hot button target group, the queer folks.

Yet, in fact. That intellectual side of the matter, including quite a bit of theological and ethical work, has been going on in the academy for five or six decades, ever since WWII and right after when the barest glimmers shined out to the effect that our negative traditions about queer folks might, just might, be mistaken.

Who bothers with all that when deep, strong negative feelings get stirred up? Fear, disgust, and a queasy sense of disorientation crop up nearly every single time sexuality gets discussed, especially if anybody really acknowledges that neither human embodiment nor interpersonal relationships can be simplistically tagged and intellectuall-emotionally boxed neatly up into nothing but our legacy, traditional categories - all this or all that.

If the feelings were not so primal, in a negative direction - would African bishops be holding forth about the innate dangers of accidentally or intentionally happening to rub shoulders at common prayer with, say, queer folks. (Or uppity women? The believers afraid of women who can read and think are nearly as alarmed and say they are nearly as danger-averse as any of the no-queer-folks-near-me crowd.)

One actually wonders how such believers can get on in a modern, western democracy where in fact they will be expected to work effectively and get along on any number of challenging work teams, likely to include one or more queer folks and/or uppity women.

We may only realize all that we Anglicans have lost when the global big tent actually finishes collapsing in deference to rigid views from both the right and the left.

Thanks again, Cheryl C for translating the meanness of men - and in this case I often do mean, men - all dressed up in fancy, high talk about good/evil, purity/dirt, and such.

It was good of Gledhill to make the text of Cameron's lecture available for download. I encourage those interested to read it for yourself rather than rely on digests.

Dear Folks,

It is indeed unfortunate, but members of the Anglican Communion are simply undergoing what many of our world's faith communities have suffered through already. In a word, it's called "fundamentalism", which by the way is simply one more form of idolotry. There is nothing inerrant but God. Whether it be my preferred translation of the Bible, the Koran, or the Torah; my preferred edition of the Book of Common Prayer; the Anglican Communion itself; my perception of myself as deliverer of an apostate church; the equation of my political or theological positions as "necessary for salvation" or peace; the elevation of my own neurosis to doctrinal imperative; all I am doing is replacing God with reflections of myself and my bigotry.

We have seen the world upended by political, ideological, and religious fundamentalism for decades. It's time we named it for what it is, idolotry. It's time we grew up to realized that angry men will use anything, particularly religion and faith, to gain or maintain cultural control and power.

Pray for our church. Pray for courage. Work for justice. Speak the truth. Allow God to do with us what God will.

Thanks for the opportunity to vent. I remain...

Yours in Christ,

The Rev. Randall J. Keeney
St. Barnabas Episcopal Church
Greensboro, North Carolina
U.S.A.

“Faced with the levels of anger, political subterfuge and almost histrionic rhetoric that seem to swirl about our Communion, I can understand those who say that perhaps the time has come to let the Communion go. If it stands on a precipice already, why not administer that little shove to put it out of its misery?”

Yes, indeed. And the Global South, along with the con evos, just gave it that push.

Thosee who speak of war should be giving thanks that this time, for all the words being exchanged - there are no armies in the field -- remember Cromwell and others? -- and no one being held in the Tower or in like danger? Columba Gilliss

"the Churches of the West are losing a sense of their identity as they get lulled into the liberalism and relativism which are presumed to be the hallmarks of the modern Western society."

What exactly do the esteemed leaders of the Communion mean when they talk about 'relativism'? I don't known any relativists. I don't know of anyone who maintains that homosexuality is good for Westerners but bad for Africans, or suggests that the Gospel's attitude to women priests is dependent upon the cultural background of the reader. Tolerance is not relativism; my willingness to join in communion with people whose views (and actions) I personally find obnoxious is not to compromise the integrity of my own views. Willingness to accept that human knowledge of divine Truth must always be limited, conditional, and provisional is not denial that such Truth exists. It seems to me that 'relativism' is a cheap (and inaccurate) shot fired at so-called 'liberals' by the intellectually vacuous. If we really were relativists, we wouldn't give a fig what other people do or believe so long as it is culturally appropriate for them.

Goran:

Canon Gregory was referring to the North Atlantic axis that defined Anglicanism as it grew throughout the world--England on the one hand and America on the other. Two of the more important NATO members, I must add, hence the comparison.

I know. I find it shameful.

"It seems to me that 'relativism' is a cheap (and inaccurate) shot fired at so-called 'liberals' by the intellectually vacuous."

Interesting, but at the same time there is the idea of "who are you tell me what's right and wrong?" Relativism, as I understand the conservative use of the term, is precisely what you claim it isn't, at least in effect. If we cannot know absolute truth, then truth is relative. Now, I don't fully agree with this. I think the Christian idea that the Spirit will lead us into all truth is acknowledgement that we don't know it all. But the accusation is, I think, a manifestation of the basic conservative fear: if we do not know absolute truth, what's to become of us? How can we decide on morally ambiguous issues? Simple, make the unambiguous by application of absolute truth! How can we know we are doing what God wants us to do if there is no Law? Note that this implies that behaving in a manner pleasing to God is an obligation for something, and it seems very much like justification by works to me. Also, there are those for whom, if there is no absolute truth, there can be no basis for feeling good about one'sself/better than others, since there is no way to prove the rightness of one's behaviour. So, while I think 'relativism' is overused, there are some points to be made in contemplating the relativism of modern society.