Thinking Anglicans

Opinion – 12 June 2021

Rob Price The Living Church The Distance of the Performer

David Walker ViaMedia.News Banning Conversion Therapy Must “Focus on the Victim Not the Perpetrator”
There are related news items in The Guardian and Church Times.

Archbishop Cranmer Christ Church Cathedral Oxford blocks its own Canon on Twitter
Archdruid Eileen The Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley Ritual for Blocking a Cathedral Canon on Twitter

Kate Gibson Rylands Blog Finding faith in the urban archive

Pip Martin Church Times This traumatised nation needs open churches
“Keeping the doors unlocked shows pandemic-scarred parishioners that they are not alone”

Rosie Harper ViaMedia.News Apology without Change is Manipulation

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Father Ron Smith
2 years ago

Rosie Harper’s piece precisely states the problems of continuing homophobia and sexism in the Church – where apologies from Church leaders do not match up with appropriate action being carried out to remove the cause of these ills within the Church. Talk is cheap and inaction, cheaper. But where does it all get us? when will The People actually experience some substantive results from LLF?

Last edited 2 years ago by Father Ron Smith
Filigree Jones
Filigree Jones
2 years ago

Archdruid Eileen hits the nail on the head with her trademark combination of acute observation, theological nous and mostly gentle irony. There are small offences that are forgotten readily, medium sized offences that are forgotten eventually, and some offences that are on such a scale that they are never forgotten and become part of the permanent story about those people and places. The Christ Church saga and its assorted subplots has crossed that threshold.

Simon Dawson
Simon Dawson
2 years ago

Could someone please explain to a social media luddite what is involved in “blocking” on Twitter, and what are the implications. Thank you.

Michael H.
Michael H.
Reply to  Simon Dawson
2 years ago

Simon Dawson – Twitter is like a large school playground, a lot of fights breaking out. If you were on Twitter, you could call yourself any name you choose and basically say what you like. The laws of libel are slowly catching up. Every comment comprises 280 characters ie letters of the alphabet, numbers, punctuation marks. If you wrote a comment, and I took umbrage, I can select an option whereby you can’t engage with me any further ie if there were a blocking facility in Thinking Anglicans and I wanted no further contact with you, you wouldn’t be able… Read more »

Tim Chesterton
Reply to  Simon Dawson
2 years ago

Simon: the short answer is that if you block someone they can’t see your posts, let alone respond to them. Most of us on Twitter have had to do that now and again because of people who can’t resist the temptation to yell at us. And yet, I’ve also come across some wonderful people on Twitter, and find a lot of inspiration there.

Interested Observer
Interested Observer
Reply to  Tim Chesterton
2 years ago

“the short answer is that if you block someone they can’t see your posts” In practice, it has no effect, because (for most people) their tweets are public and therefore visible to people who are not logged in. All the blockee has to do is visit Twitter while not logged in, and they can see the tweets in question. I think I have even seen a Chrome extension which automates this: you click on a tweet you can’t see and it opens an Incognito window in which the tweet is displayed. Obviously, there will be people who guard their privacy… Read more »

Simon Dawson
Simon Dawson
Reply to  Interested Observer
2 years ago

Thanks to the three of you for your answers, which confirmed my guesses about what this meant. My follow on questions is why is this newsworthy, and demanding of a full article on Archbishop Cranmer, and all the debate it is getting?

Tim Chesterton
Reply to  Simon Dawson
2 years ago

I’ll leave that one to the Brits, Simon. I’m not going near the Christ Church Oxford story.

Rowland Wateridge
Rowland Wateridge
Reply to  Tim Chesterton
2 years ago

And we greatly respect your neutrality. Leaving aside ‘Archbishop Cranmer’, some recent comments on the current TA thread about Ch Ch have taken on an unpleasant and personally confrontational character. For my part, I regret to see this on TA – it isn’t the same thing as the vigorous debate to which we are accustomed here and which can, and should, always be courteous.

Tim Chesterton
Reply to  Rowland Wateridge
2 years ago

One thing I’m learning, Rowland, is that there’s no point in someone like myself commenting on anything touching on the Church of England’s establishment status. I work in what is essentially (in Brit terms) an Anglican ‘free church’; the worldviews are too far apart.

Janet Fife
Janet Fife
Reply to  Simon Dawson
2 years ago

Because it’s an example of the outrageous and increasingly desperate behaviour of those currently in charge at Christ Church, and the diocese’s woeful failure to support its Dean.

Bill Broadhead
Bill Broadhead
2 years ago

Archdruid Eileen’s Liturgy might also be named ‘To Mark the Dying Days of a Desperate, Insecure, Brutal and Hypocritical Regime’ – which could also be an apt description of the ‘senior leadership team’ (or most of them) in at least one other Diocese of the C of E!

Are you planning to reproduce the cartoon from Archbishop Cranmer’s blog?

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