More Thoughts on The AMiA Mess
1. Thus far the Anglican Mission press office has proven to be a source of spin, misinformation, and borderline slander. Everything it publishes must be treated with extreme skepticism
2. Those who rail most vociferously against bloggers are those who have the most invested in managing, controlling, and shaping information for public consumption. Bloggers on interwebs get in the way of this shaping and controlling by circumventing official channels and putting primary source documentation and often critical opinion directly to the reading public.
3. This is not to say “bloggers are always right”. We’ve all been wrong before and will be wrong again but for all our faults, the service blogs provide is indispensable to a free society. Slaves don’t need information. Free people with decisions to make do.
4. I see no hope of Bishop Murphy's crew finding a new provincial home within a recognized Anglican Communion province. This is good and right.
5. If I were serving under any of the AMiA bishops who broke from Rwanda, I would be worried about my standing in the Anglican world. I’m sure lots of AMiA people are feeling the same way. But those who use this crisis as an excuse to troll for new converts to Rome, the ACNA, TEC, or any other jurisdiction should be ashamed of themselves.
6. The revisionists are mocking us. And rightly so.
7. The best response from those of us belonging to the ACNA is repentance for our own pride, vanity, and divisive petulance.
8. It would be foolish and insulting for the ACNA to accept and receive +Bishop Murphy and those bishops with him into the ACNA. Foolish to think that we will not be used in the same way by the same people, insulting to our Rwandan friends and allies who have already been used.
9. The ACNA “Mission Partner” status of whatever vestige of the AMiA remains with Bishop Murphy needs to be reassessed and, apart from their reconciliation with Rwanda, ended.
10. What does this say, if anything, about the character of North American Anglicanism? I don’t know. But it could be that, like David, our generation has too much blood on its hands to build the Temple. The jurisdictions formed by those of us leaving the Episcopal Church have been shaped by ecclesial war. I don’t, personally speaking, know how to really trust a bishop. Perhaps the best we can do is struggle and fight not to splinter into a thousand sharp little thorns until our children come of age?
11. Or, perhaps this says nothing at all about North American Anglicanism in general but quite a bit about one man in particular?
12. It's been said before, but bears saying again: the Archbishop of Rwanda is not Pharaoh. Bishop Murphy is not Moses.
13. When a church officially promotes heresy she ceases to be a church. To break ecclesial bonds with such an institution is to stay within the Church. It is not schism.
14. Breaking ecclesial bonds because of a dispute over money, pride, power, and autonomy is schism.
2. Those who rail most vociferously against bloggers are those who have the most invested in managing, controlling, and shaping information for public consumption. Bloggers on interwebs get in the way of this shaping and controlling by circumventing official channels and putting primary source documentation and often critical opinion directly to the reading public.
3. This is not to say “bloggers are always right”. We’ve all been wrong before and will be wrong again but for all our faults, the service blogs provide is indispensable to a free society. Slaves don’t need information. Free people with decisions to make do.
4. I see no hope of Bishop Murphy's crew finding a new provincial home within a recognized Anglican Communion province. This is good and right.
5. If I were serving under any of the AMiA bishops who broke from Rwanda, I would be worried about my standing in the Anglican world. I’m sure lots of AMiA people are feeling the same way. But those who use this crisis as an excuse to troll for new converts to Rome, the ACNA, TEC, or any other jurisdiction should be ashamed of themselves.
6. The revisionists are mocking us. And rightly so.
7. The best response from those of us belonging to the ACNA is repentance for our own pride, vanity, and divisive petulance.
8. It would be foolish and insulting for the ACNA to accept and receive +Bishop Murphy and those bishops with him into the ACNA. Foolish to think that we will not be used in the same way by the same people, insulting to our Rwandan friends and allies who have already been used.
9. The ACNA “Mission Partner” status of whatever vestige of the AMiA remains with Bishop Murphy needs to be reassessed and, apart from their reconciliation with Rwanda, ended.
10. What does this say, if anything, about the character of North American Anglicanism? I don’t know. But it could be that, like David, our generation has too much blood on its hands to build the Temple. The jurisdictions formed by those of us leaving the Episcopal Church have been shaped by ecclesial war. I don’t, personally speaking, know how to really trust a bishop. Perhaps the best we can do is struggle and fight not to splinter into a thousand sharp little thorns until our children come of age?
11. Or, perhaps this says nothing at all about North American Anglicanism in general but quite a bit about one man in particular?
12. It's been said before, but bears saying again: the Archbishop of Rwanda is not Pharaoh. Bishop Murphy is not Moses.
13. When a church officially promotes heresy she ceases to be a church. To break ecclesial bonds with such an institution is to stay within the Church. It is not schism.
14. Breaking ecclesial bonds because of a dispute over money, pride, power, and autonomy is schism.
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