20 April 2010

Irrelevance -- another letter

Well the Global South meeting is mostly collected and is underway. Some participants are impacted by the volcanic activity and flight disruptions in Europe, but the rest appear to be there. It is actually a substantial group, a little over 100 if I counted correctly, almost all clergy, mostly but not uniquely bishops. The list is here.

As recently as last week, the blogs suggested that Dr. Williams would appear. However, yesterday Lambeth announced that the archbishop was unable to fit it into his schedule. Remember he is in England which has that lovely volcanic cloud overhead. He did not even claim that he is unable to travel (probably true) but rather used the rather tired "schedule" excuse. That comes under the heading of "studied insult" I believe.

Dr. Williams did send a video and it is public. You can see his video letter here: Dr. Williams' video. It is rather a sad piece.

The archbishop says he is talking to people, unidentified, about consequences for America's honesty. Unlike British bishops our lesbian and gay clerics are not in the closet and that it appears requires, "consequences." OK, I suspect he has forgotten that we did quite well without the English from 1776 until the formation of the communion and the minor fact that the communion has no authority to impose consequences on anyone. In plan English, I think he is stalling. After all, it is harder to get all those Southern prelates to agree if they are disbursed so he is hoping to stall about a week.

It won't wash.

Clearly the South contains a fair number of folks at least among its bishops who want little or nothing to do with Americans. I do not know if they will formally declare themselves outside the Anglican communion or not. But they will act like they are in another organization when it comes to meeting and cooperating. Calling us naughty and saying we can not go to a meeting is not going to satisfy the South.

Dr. Williams has run out of time.

The question is to me, does it matter? I think it is time to learn the lesson of our technology. We do not need global organizations we need to learn how to live in the web and network world. So my answer to my question is 'no.'

What matters is what we do now. We could begin by refusing to act as though Dr. Williams has any power. We could go the next step and start deposition processes for the TEC bishops in Singapore this week. After all, they seem to think consequences are a good thing. Then we could be about the business of establishing new relationships, respectful relationships, with those churches in the South that still think they want them.

FWIW
jimB

1 comment:

Christal said...

Somehow, I am feeling doubtful of the relationships with those churches in the South...

St Laika's

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