"published in places you might not normally look"

Nor WOULD I look at the IRD site. They're a hate group, plain&simple. >:-(

Lord have mercy!

Gee it is so nice to have both of these commentaries published right now, just so that we are strongly reminded, twice, of just how relentless (and mean? and spin-dried?) the conservative Anglican realignment is.

So far as the IRD essay goes, I am cautioned to recall that IRD was a major player in fostering polarizations and big tent destruction campaigns -aimed at Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and if dim memory serves, Baptists. So far the only wide success of the war has affected the Baptists in USA, at least by consensus accounts.

The other Home Invasions of any and all big tents in religion is still loading up and riding across leeway like a fifth horseman of a conservative IRD apocalypse. IRD likes apocalypse, one presumes, since it encourages us all to keep rushing into doomsday conservatisvistic wars (which always have their real people targets to rile us up self-righteously no matter what?).

Just think - queer folks on our planet being brash, impudent, self-confident enough -
(1) to honestly reveal themselves among us,
(2) to openly and assertively exercise any and all citizen competencies (a) to which they might be entitled and (b) of which they might be capable,
and of course that really, really, really, really awful example of (3) making lifelong ethical commitments to one another and to parenting children. In public, with follow through.

Oh my. Can it get any worse, as a horrid IRD sign of religious apocalypse? Is this the end of family and of civilization, period? People making lifelong ethical commitments? Phew. People talking openly and honestly in public community life? Eeeek. People parenting children all the way through college or graduate school. Aaaawk. People assertively living life as equally enfranchised citizens? Yuck.

The Challenge essay is also useful, as it inadvertently challenges me to rehabilitate my negative tilting views of what Rowan is up to, as Canterbury my very own progressive believer instrument of communion.

According to Challenge, Rowan is a sly dog indeed - committed to preserving the Anglican global big tent - through what the essay calls, disarming mad conservative realignment doctrine bomb-throwers (my paraphrase) and of course, delay. Gets me to wondering if Rowan recognized Bob Duncan's face but mabye not his shirt?

"..the Anglican Communion no longer worked. Its structures were not a place for holy men, but for hollow men: bishops who knew in their hollow hearts they were stuffed with straw, trapped in a purposeless whirl of apathy and spiritual torpor called “dialogue.” The Anglican Communion had finally broken, coming to an end “not with a bang but a whimper.” - George Conger

The above comment, by George Conger in his diatribe, in the so-called 'Christian Challenge' article on this thread, betrays once again the deep cynicism of a certain brand of 'religious' commentators on affairs within the Church today.

For such ardent fans of the 'No-Change' agenda in the Church, Conger delivers his pessimistic view of the recent Lambeth Conference as a 'cop-out' on the part of Archbishop Rowan and the Bishops of the Communion who cared enough to attend.

His description of what went on in the course of the Conference, as the product of - "hollow men, stuffed men, leaning together, headpiece filled with straw" - might rather be said to apply to those bishops who stayed away - afraid of the prospect of the possibility of new directions in the mission of the Church.

What actually happened at Lambeth was something of a spiritual and cathartic nature that Conger and his ilk might never quite understand - Prayer, Silence, Eucharistic Worship, Teaching, Contemplation, Group Bible Study and theological discourse centred around the Gospel. Under the prayerful leadership of the ABC, the Bishops present were engaged in reflection on what God might want the Church to be and do in the context of the world of today - a Godly business.

This was no triumphalistic celebration of like-mindedness as at GAFCON. Not was it an attempt to take over the agenda and leadership of the Anglican Communion by force. Instead, it provided the participants with a breathing-space, a concept foreign to those who would bull-doze the Church into the pursuit of biblical literalism and relentless conformity to fundamentalist religion.

The mission of the Church needs at least as much prayer as frenetic activity - in accord with the scriptural admonition, which sometimes seems to have been lost to the Church:
"Be still, and know that I am God".

Conger wrote "The Anglican Communion had finally broken, coming to an end “not with a bang but a whimper.”"

Gee, I think that was the point. The world really has had enough of Christians banging away.

The meek shall inherit the earth, and that requires peace, and that requires tolerance and hospitality, and that means avoiding bangs.

So the Communion used as the rubber stamp to entrench and justify misogyny, complacency, repression, sacrifices, conflict, selfishness, and elitism has come to an end? Good. About time.

Let those who love violence, repression and conflict be honest about their desires and go off to form their banging communion. At least there will be no more deceitful facades that they are for love and peace, when they are not.

Conger is so one sided and his coverage in the Church of England newspaper of the Episcopal Church is farcical...its like having Ian Paisley reporting on the Roman Catholic Church

"Conger is so one sided and his coverage in the Church of England newspaper of the Episcopal Church is farcical...its like having Ian Paisley reporting on the Roman Catholic Church"

Posted by: Robert Ian Williams on Friday, 24 October 2008 at 6:23pm BST -

Or even perhaps like you, Robert, a newly-formed Roman Catholic, reporting on the activities of the historic Anglican Communion?

I smiled at Robert Ian’s description of George’s journalistic balance!

But putting the obvious aside, this potted history is significant. Histories tend to be written by academics on the winning side so it is very important to have this account from the perspective of those who have hitherto failed to achieve their goals.

To be fair George leaves us in no doubt where his own heart lies from the off, so this is clearly an opinion piece and so the “facts” that follow are unsurprisingly interpreted and presented in such a way so as to support the position he declares.

This IS what some conservative Americans view as an honest and full account of the facts and as such George offers us a very important insight. They are so convinced of the rightness of their cause that everyone who does not concur with their understanding of the situation is, in the words of Bishop Iker “dysfunctional” if not heretical.

So in this “history” fact and opinion are blurred in such a way as to give absolute proof to the theory he ascribes to Williams that there is no absolute truth!
Take just this little thing, George writes:

“Since his appointment in 2003, Dr. Williams has surrounded himself with a small circle of advisers and aides who have been tasked with putting the Archbishop’s theories into action.”

Duh! The significant feature of Rowan’s arrival at Lambeth was that he took on the entire Carey staff – and just as a matter of interest when he does come to replace his Chaplain a few years later it goes to a strong adherent of FiF. But there you are, let’s not bother with the truth when we are building such a convincing case by suggestion and innuendo.

As to the eminence grise – The Archbishop of Sydney – the doyen of Anglican values and ecclesiology ……. Hardly a word!

In my opinion any attempt to tell the story of the current debacle that doesn’t actually begin and end with the Archbishop of Sydney is fatally flawed ……

It is always tempting to cry, "Insitution X has failed" when the failure is only to achieve one's own goals. I've heard this cry from left and right -- what no one seems to want to admit is that Anglicans have and always will be a muddle with some extremists at the edges detaching themselves from time to time, fading to oblivion -- or not -- depending not on what the other Anglicans do but on how well founded their own campaign is. I mean, the Methodists seem to have done rather well, but most of the Common Cause remain fairly minor entities and it is too soon to tell if there is much market for that particular form of theological thought and action.

So, George, it's not quite so bad. Anglicanism has not failed, even if it isn't acting as you think it ought to act. It isn't acting the way I think it ought to act either -- but this is the nature of a church structure based on settlement rather than decisive excision.