Doh! Give the journalist a dictionary.
Update 30/07/08: I’ve deleted the last comment (see my final comment) on this post and closed comments. It’s gone way off topic.
The Windsor Continuation Group’s observations made to The Lambeth Conference begin like this:
This document is NOT a report by the Windsor Continuation Group. It constitutes their preliminary observations on the life of the Communion and of the current state of responses to the recommendations of the Windsor Report, and offering some suggestions about the way forward.
Part 3 reaffirms this idea of suggestions.
We make the following suggestions for situations which might arise in different parts of the Communion:
- the swift formation of a ‘Pastoral Forum’ at Communion level to engage theologically and practically with situations of controversy as they arise or divisive actions that may be taken around the Communion.
How is this reported? (Note, I quote the reporter’s work, not some sub’s headline.) In The Guardian we have:
A pastoral forum is to be set up to resolve disputes within the Anglican communion over divisive issues such as homosexuality, same sex blessings and cross border interventions.
In The Times :
A new pastoral forum is to be set up to bring rebel provinces into line in the Anglican Communion. … The forum will also clamp down
I find myself wondering:
- Whether there might be an anonymous spin doctor in the background here, whom neither journalist bothers to check.
- Which bit of “NOT a report” they don’t get.
- Whether they know the meaning of the word “suggestion” and how it differs from decision, and plan.
July 28th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
This bias and half-understood reporting drives us nuts here at Lambeth, Doug. The other bit of bias in the imes report is to fail to acknowledge that if this is a mechanism to bring people into line it affects three subject areas (1) moratoria on blessings/ consecrations (2) incursions (3) work to support and include gay people. So the big stick would spank liberals over (1) but conservatives over (2) and, probably mostly (3). As it is all we get is a one dimensional report, framed n such a way as to inflame people on the basis of half the story.
July 28th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Thank you Bishop Alan *Smith*. While they can’t get even your name right, perhaps you should say something outrageous!
July 28th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
If a group releases a document which reports on their deliberations, it is a report even if it says it is not a report.
July 28th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
This is NOT a comment. Or is it?
July 29th, 2008 at 12:29 am
“Report” carries all sorts of authoritative connotations which this document wishes to avoid. It may be that the group chose their words badly, but I think this much of their intent was clear. You being a translator, I’m surprised you make this point. A lack of sensitivity to context in the name of an absolute rule of dictionary definition is hardly the degree of linguistic sensitivity needed for good mutual understanding.
July 29th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Your Grace: there would have been no ‘incursions’ (nice imperial word, that!) if there had been no gay consecration and ssb’s in the first place - I’ve heard on video the archbishop from South America say they were INVITED by orthodox parishes in North America to help them because of the persecution they faced from their revisionist bishops; so it is not right to imply a moral equivalence. Nigeria, Uganda, Southern Cone, Kenya etc did not initiate this; they responded to a call for help, as any Christian should. Orthodox Anglicans in the US and Canada are deeply grateful for the help they’ve received from the wider Communion in the face of depositions and attempted seizures of property.
Just what action do you envision as ‘helping and supporting gay people’? Surely this means to live a godly life in keeping with the Gospel and teaching of the apostles?
July 29th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Mark B
I’ve worked in a lot of different organisations: government departments, companies, universities etc. Suppose someone in another part of the organisation or a different organisation came along to me and said ‘My superviser isn’t doing what the organisation says he should. Please be my supervisor instead.’? Would it really be the Christian thing to do to say ‘OK, I’m your supervisor now, ignore your previous supervisor’? Suppose that person complains: ‘I won’t recognise the authority of my supervisor and now I’ve been removed from my post and had my office space taken away’? Would you really describe that as persecution? Or would you say, as in 99% of organisations, that if you won’t abide by the authority structure of the organisation you’re part of, you have to take the consequences of your actions?
Do you think that Nigerian Anglican priests who disapprove of the Archbishop’s policy get to pick and choose who they are subordinate to? If you want hierarchy and authority within the organised church, you have to be prepared to abide by the decisions of those above you, even if you don’t agree with them.
July 29th, 2008 at 9:56 am
magistra: The Church is supposed to be a divine community, not another secular organization like government departments etc (which are still subject to the rule of law as well as regular elections). A bishop is under the authority of Scripture as well, and if he teaches and acts contrary to it, he must be opposed. How do you think Athanasius and Ambrose dealt with the lawfully ordained Arian bishops of their day - a Kirchenkampf that lasted from 325 to 381! They freely ordained orthodox (catholic) bishops for Arian dioceses and didn’t give a monkey’s about Cross-Border Incursions! Read some 4th century church history - it’s very illuminating.
Orthodox Episcopalians/Anglicans in the US and Canada have indeed taken the consequences of their actions, being notionally deposed (fairly meaningless), losing jobs and property - though this is all being fought out in the courts because 815 has deep pockets and property laws vary from state to state. Legally it’s not as simple as you might be suggesting.
I have no doubt the Nigerian Church is very hierarchical, with its own share of pompous poo-bahs. I also know that Tec is at work there, and in Uganda, trying to organize its own alternative.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Well, Doug, it was you who wrote “Give the journalist a dictionary”, and now you are saying they should follow the context rather than the dictionary definition - which is what in fact they were doing. Anyway, neither of the journalists whose writing you link to call this a “report”; in the next sentences to the ones you quoted Riazat calls the specific point a “recommendation” and Ruth wrote of “proposals”, not all that different from the word “suggestion” used in the non-report. You do seem to be straining out gnats here, but would you spot a camel?
Bishop Alan, I know this is not your fault as the official Lambeth press operation is under Archbishop Rowan’s control, but the way to overcome “bias and half-understood reporting” is for your fellow bishops to release accurate and fair press releases about what you are all doing.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Magistra, perhaps we don’t “want hierarchy and authority within the organised church”. Jesus certainly didn’t, if you read Mark 10:42-44. But then it may be impossible to get back to what the church really should be without abolishing the whole Anglican and catholic episcopal system, which ever since the 2nd century has been throwing up “its own share of pompous poo-bahs” because, as Jesus pointed out, it is bound to do so.
July 29th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Peter, can you point to an inaccurate or unfair press release?
July 29th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
No, Doug. The problem is that I can’t point to any press releases at all, at least on the substantive matters which the press want to report. So they have nothing to go on except for rumour, and of course they make what they can of that.
July 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
AFAIK, they’re pretty much having a daily press conference. That’s not exactly rumour, is it?
July 29th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
But what are they being told at the press conferences? Not much they think worth reporting, it seems.
July 29th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Now Ruth Gledhill explains much better than I can why she ends up reporting the sensational gossip, instead of what she would like to report. Doug, what answer would you have for her? What should she report? She won’t get many readers by reporting that “the 650 bishops had spent the day in their indaba groups discussing interfaith relations” or that a bishop’s wife enjoyed a Riding Lights production.
July 29th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
The thing is, Peter, you seem to actively look forward to splits in the Anglican Communion, and seize hopefully on every one of Ruth’s more sensationalist reports. You seem wiling to believe anything bad about +Rowan with the same indiscriminate fervour you believe nothing bad about Todd Bentley.
Ruth’s reporting is bizarrely erratic, sometimes careful, and sometimes wild. It reminds me of that old insult, cast originally I think at Robert Runcie, that she “bears the imprint of the last person who sat on her” That would be unfair, but some of her reports do tend in that direction. I don’t think much of the way ACO or Lambeth Palace or Church House deal with the press, generally we Anglicans are either naive or defensive. It’s only the pressure groups who have their act together, and they are IMO deceitful and manipulative, like most secular spin doctors. So there’s a question: can you be a good spin doctor and a good Christian simultaneously.?
July 29th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
“It reminds me of that old insult, cast originally I think at Robert Runcie, that she “bears the imprint of the last person who sat on her”.”
That’s good, and I think it is a fair description of Ruthie - she swings regularly in her enthusiasms and loyalties, anxious to please everyone, like a high school senior hoping to be elected prom queen. Alas, it’s a poor sign of the state of religion in England that a world newspaper treats it like a gossip column.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Doug and Mark, yes, I sympathise with Ruth who is being dragged in all kinds of directions, no doubt under pressure from above to come up with something to justify her three weeks in a luxury house in Harbledown so they don’t think she is spending all her time in the pool!
But, Doug, have you been reading what I have written about Lambeth over the last two weeks? Actually not very much. There was this which gently mocks one of Ruth’s more over-the-top posts, and this which was in support of Dave Walker. This one was about the creed used at a service, not really about the conference at all. And then there was this at the very start, in which I predicted, accurately enough from what we see so far, that there would be no fireworks but the press would not be satisfied.
So it’s just not true that I “seize hopefully on every one of Ruth’s more sensationalist reports”. However, I do hope for some kind of resolution to the current mess in the Anglican Communion, instead of inaction which will simply prolong the agony. Some of the suggestions for action which Ruth and others have been speculating about might be better than doing nothing, but in fact I don’t see any of them coming to very much.
July 30th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Mark B.
You say:
A bishop is under the authority of Scripture as well, and if he teaches and acts contrary to it, he must be opposed.
The problem is, of course, who decides that a bishop is acting contrary to Scripture? If you say that individual congregations or priests decide (or even a bishop from a different province) you get chaos pretty soon. Were the Donatists right to decide that they would not be lead by bishops who had ‘betrayed’ the faith, even if they had subsequently been reconciled with the church? Once you start saying that such matters can be decided by zealous groups without due process, then you have an organisation that will unravel quickly. Diocesan bishops within ECUSA who didn’t support the ordination of Gene Robinson are nevertheless being intruded on and having their authority attacked by GAFCONites.
Deducing from the Biblical statement that ‘one should not put one’s sickle into another man’s field’ that encroachment into another’s diocese was wrong developed fairly early in the church for just those reasons.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:02 am
magistra:
1. The Donatist controversy wasn’t about heresy (false teaching), it had to do with the conviction that the traditores had forever disqualified themselves from leadership by apostasy. I’ve never been tortured for my faith or seen my family martyred, so I can’t judge if the Donatists were right on that disciplinary question.
2. “…who decides that a bishop is acting contrary to Scripture?”
Ah, that’s the very nub of ‘Anglican Difficulties’ (as Edward Norman dubbed them). Rome has the Magisterium, Orthodoxy has ‘the Holy Tradition’ (in effect, the consensus of their synods), but what does Anglicanism have? Heretofore, a kind of gentlemen’s agreement that doesn’t work when people cease to be gentlemen (and ladies). Hence the lumbering and uncertain progress toward an Anglican covenant. Do you wonder that Newman became a Roman Catholic? He foresaw all this 160 years ago! Your reference to the Donatists is really an argument for Catholicism, as Cardinal Manning pointed out to Newman, citing Augustine’s words ‘Securus iudicat omnis orbis terrarum’.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:56 am
magistra: moreover, Hooker, the father of Anglican ecclesiastical polity, says in his ‘Laws’ that bishops must not ignore the counsel of their presbyters. They must not set themselves over them, like mini-popes. No Cyprianism here! See the website of the English cleric John Richardson ‘The Ugley Vicar’ on this point.
July 30th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Peter KIrk, I’ve deleted your most recent comment here. In my view it bought into rhetoric I regard as libellous to TEC’s Presiding Bishop. I’m sure you can find a way to make your point in other words. OTOH, since this is straying far from topic, perhaps you’d better start a post of your own and invite your friends over there to play in your sandbox.