Tag Archives: blogs

The Diocese of New Westminster has a blog

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In one of its first posts it asks “What is ‘Big Tent’ Christianity and Why Should it Matter to Us?”

The answer seems to be a place where everyone gets along no matter what their theological differences; even, I suspect, their different religions:

Let’s face it. The very term “Christian” has been “so torn apart in the battle-to-the-death between liberals and conservatives that there’s no longer any point in using it at all,” says Clayton. Indeed, I’d add that there’s really no place for words like “liberal” and “conservative” in the exercise of effective Christian witness to a fragmented world. We can’t rehabilitate the word ‘Christian’ until we jettison our baggage of institutional dualistic thinking. Adopting these kinds of oppositional stances which stifle dialogue and over-simplify deep human concerns is not only absurd, but essentially unchristian. The inability to live with one another in a ‘big tent’ in spite of our theological and cultural differences is antithetical to the very Gospel we espouse and hobbles the work of the Holy Spirit.

Bishop Michael Ingham would be very comfortable banishing the term “Christian”, since he isn’t one: if the diocese didn’t allow for members to adhere to non-Christian theology, its own bishop wouldn’t find room in the “big tent”. Not a moment too soon, some of you are probably thinking, but a bit of an embarrassment, nevertheless.

The article goes on to reveal the recipe for revitalising the diocese:

“it’s high time for a more prophetic, more counter-cultural Christian faith”

The only problem is, in a typically grotesque piece of double speak, “more counter-cultural” translates to “more cultural capitulation”:

[a faith] that is welcoming, inclusive, and validates all the gifts that the diversity of human individuals can bring to what are ideally messy, chaotic Christian communities: communities that spill out of themselves to engage our society and culture as followers of Jesus who push the envelope – or as Tim Keel puts it in his book Intuitive Leadership – ‘embrace a paradigm of narrative, metaphor and chaos’

I have no idea what that piece of cliché riddled nonsense means, but I can guarantee it does not contain an iota of anything that is counter-cultural.

The diocese is about to invade the neighbourhood in its zeal to appear counter cultural, though:

We’ll be hearing more about it.  Our own diocese recently hosted an enthusiastic gathering of parishes where all of us were inspired by the stories about the birthing and nurturing of  ‘neighbourhood’ initiatives. The day culminated in some goal setting and proposed action planning that have potential to transform parish life as we, as followers of Jesus,  focus on finding new ways to connect to those around us.

Having worked in large companies for the last 40 odd years, I have learned that as soon as institutional fixtures  get to the stage of saying things like “birthing and nurturing,” “goal setting”, “action planning”, “potential to transform” and “focus on finding new ways to connect”, they have reached a state of mental torpor from which there is no return; nothing will get done and the perpetrators of such desperate banalities will quite soon be gurgling incoherently as they submerge in their own threadbare meanderings. A typical corporate executive whose incompetence has been thus exposed is forced to look elsewhere for employment; preferably employment whose prerequisite is not clear thinking – some end up as Anglican bishops.

Rev. Keith Nethery in the world of blogs

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Rev. Keith Nethery is becoming rather alarmed (page 2) – disturbed even – at what he reads on blogs:

What does it mean to study something? How do we go about discussing an issue?
I spend considerable time reading blogs and various media from around the world on things Anglican. In doing this, there is something becoming more and more obvious to me and it is alarming. Now let me say first that I do NOT just read one side of the story. The blogs that I have marked for daily consumption cover the entire scale of theological opinion. What bothers me is that I see some disturbing trends in how we answer the two questions that I began with.

My understanding of study is that one will find a variety of opinions and see how that informs the thoughts that they possessed going into said study. More and more, it seems to me, that study is another term for a determination to prove the “other” wrong……

When folks search “Anglican” on their computers, it is scarey what they will find masquerading as the true face of who we are. If the foregoing statement was posted on many of the blogs I read daily, it would be followed by an immediate swell of condemnation from people on both ends of the spectrum, because discussion and study have become code words for further opportunity to demand agreement for one’s place on the scale.

This comment by the very same Rev. Nethery tends to show that he is less than eager to take his own advice when he feels called upon to show that those of us who “haunt the far right side of Anglicanism” are in sore need of “a dose of reality.” ­

Job well done in this post and in the discussion with David on Samizdat. I’ve had more than one such conversation with David, Warren and the others that haunt the far right side of Anglicanism that ended similarly – oh, but we’re right and you’re wrong because we say so, thank you for coming and come back again so we can tell you how right we are. I honestly think that we need to bust into their world every once now and again to give them a dose of reality.

The exchange in question is here and, as these things go, was reasonably civil and entirely devoid of the phrase – or idea – “oh, but we’re right and you’re wrong because we say so.”

Rev. Nethery’s solution (page 2) to all this seems to be:

My oft unpopular position is that there is always room to be further informed and to weigh more ideas.

Doubtless this is a remedy that he wishes those of us that infest the swamps of Anglicanism’s right would embrace, but one – in spite of protestations to the contrary – in which he is reluctant to dabble himself: that must be because we are just spinning:

Even one of ANIC’s spinning best bloggers can’t draw more than a comment or two posting on Holy Post at the National Post.

I can’t help wondering whether what is really eating Rev. Nethery is the fact that there are people who disagree with him; and they just won’t shut up.