Marryin' Marin South

Noticing the comments on my last blog entry, from Dah • veed and referring to Erika, I don't have a view myself of Andrew Marin who is either a Conservative Christian bridge-builder with the gay community or is a wolf in sheep's clothing to do the old 'chop off your head' act once you've danced merrily in.

It depends on your circle. I see my circle as overlapping with some liberal Christians as well as undogmatic humanists and with Buddhists. I don't find any intellectual meeting with conservative Christians and so they are someone with whom I'd have a very limited conversation. Not carrying the label 'Christian', like say Colin Coward, I feel under no commitment to count Andrew Marin in. I do not believe in any incarnational Christianity requiring forms of supernatural or substitute mechanics.

Just for the record, I note what has happened among those not building any bridges from conservative Anglican Christianity to the rest. There are proposals by Archbishops John Chew and Mouneer Anis which in effect would set up a Global South Anglican structure different from any broader Communion, or alternatively require a Covenant with Primates at the deciding helm rather than a Standing Committee. These are just proposals in the air. It suggests to me that the existing Covenant is one they don't like unless, I assume, they could manipulate the Standing Committee. It's of little concern: let them do what they want. The more they do it, the more that Western Anglicanism is allowed to be sensitive to its cultural settings. The Westerners don't need a Covenant even if those Southerners think they do in their authoritarian outlook, in the 'faith once delivered' by the Victorians. It wouldn't be the same Covenant. The Archbishop of Canterbury wants to force his version through, but one wonders why. In the evening I went to an evensong in olde worlde language, but even that is dislodging.

My focus is elsewhere. Another brand new Unitarian attender, locally, and one asking me about the Gospel of Thomas (answer: a Gnostic gospel but only sayings, known complete, discovered at Nag Hammadi, regarded by The Jesus Seminar as containing some authentic Jesus sayings and thus gets serious attention, along with the view that first came the Pauline writings, then the sayings being collected, then the narrative gospels traditions, and the 'Thomas' collected up sayings). Whereas the chap from Barton hasn't returned (yet), this person shows every indication of wanting to stay. I'm observing what is a recovery of a congregation, a 'bounce' effect that is a noted phenomena so that most attending faces now are only so many years duration. It's quite strange, really.