Bad Anglican Day

Friday 14 December has been a Bad Anglican Day. First of all it was the day that the rest of the world (after the Primates) saw the Archbishop of Canterbury's Advent Letter. I have of course read it and made a basic comment (scroll down) on Thinking Anglicans ahead of considering it further, but already that letter affects the Christmas message out the same day from him that, as a result, had a particular impact of hollowness as my comment on that shows (scroll down). I have been summarising the Advent Letter for myself and thus setting it up for comment here later.

Summarising is a process of careful reading: as I summarise each paragraph I ask myself whether I have the meaning right. I try not to rely on verbatim reproduction but to change the words via a text processor and get the meaning as close to what could be the original, and shorter. This is underway now. This way helps me think, though I am sure that the flaw in the Advent Letter is to do with the Anglican Communion again being treated as if it is a Church. Nevertheless the boundaries are being drawn in to the point of how to read and interpret the Bible, and I suddenly feel like leaving not just the Anglican Communion but the Church fo England. How we read the Bible is up to us, following various methods in scholarship, not some aparent crypto-authoritarian who elevates purple (who'd have once thought it, from Rowan Williams!).

It is has been a Bad Anglican Day also in that I wrote, a little ahead of the final week, my own feedback criticism of the intended 2008 Lent Course in the Lincoln Diocese. It is just bad, as said previously for the first three weeks, and this course should never see the light of day. The intention is for the group to produce a collective response, so mine may be limited to my website (though I will take it with me). It will be updated after the last week's session on Thursday.