I’m announcing a blog carnival. Those who don’t know/aren’t sure what that is, it’s simply a collection of links to writings on a unified topic. And you have to eat cotton candy while you read them. This means anyone reading this may participate. If you choose to do so, just leave a comment to that effect here or email me at haligweorc hotmail with all appropriate punctuation.

Here’s the rationale…
In the build-up to General Convention, a view has been widely circulated beginning, I believe, with internet rhetoric and things like Kendall Harmon’s “Choose this day” video that there are really two religions in the Episcopal Church: one orthodox Christianity, the other anything goes Unitarian-Paganism that likes to take over Episcopal buildings. I’m always suspicious of simple dichotomies and this one is no exception. Now I see myself as being middle-of-the-road and my readership is fairly broad theologically-speaking. Some readers are more conservative, some more liberal, and others vary in ways that the conservative/liberal dichotomy doesn’t capture. My goal is to get a sense of where we are as individuals who take our faith seriously. What comes out in the end? Two religions or something else?

Here’s the topic…
The Carnival topic is Christian Identity. I’m inviting posts that wrestle with five topics–you can address anywhere from all to only one. My preference, of course, is to see you engage all five to get a holistic sense of how you construct Christian identity. Here are the five:

• Canon
• Creed
• Apostolic Succession
• catholicity
• reformation

And yes, the last two are intentionally lower-case. Great tomes can and have been written on each of these topics; that’s not what we’re after. Indeed, I think that clarity can come with brevity–so I’m asking that you hold your response to around 1500 words (approximately 3 single spaced pages) allotting therefore about 300 words per topic if you’re going for even distribution. Entries can be reflective, occasional, systematic, apologetic, polemical, whatever–even a catena of quotes from revered authorities past or present (properly notated, of course). Anyone is welcome to play along. The Carnival itself will occur on (I’m being arbitary here…) June 28th. So, if you’re interested in participating, write something up according to these guidelines, post it on your blog, and let me know about it any time before then.