There’s been a certain atmosphere over sectors of the Anglican blogosphere. A quietness, a relectance to engage–and least that’s what I’ve been feeling myself…
Perhaps it’s the wearing effects of the Great Unpleasantness, maybe it’s life in general, particularly now at the end of the term, a draining time for those in academia.
It seems to me that blogs and blog-communities go through cycles; right now we’re in a trough…
It’s just end of term for me. I’m also now on an apartment hunt… No more university housing in my life. Maybe, I’ll dream up something for your liturgy carnival.
End of term.
Detaching from Church.
Enjoying life a lot more.
To be perfectly honest, I think something is going on that isn’t visible at this point. I think Akinola crossed a line by installing Minns in Virginia, and I suspect that a lot of conservative actors, beginning with Duncan in Pittsburgh, are watching what they started begin to unfold with very mixed emotions.
Medievalists may recall where Dante placed schismatics, and that is why these “conservatives” (actually, radicals) are so eager to paint the Episcopal Church as departing from “real” Anglicanism. But that’s a pretty thin veneer to cover the obvious power grab going on.
I suggest that we all start paying attention to the money. There are, after all, billions upon billions of Nigerian petrodollars disappearing without materially affecting the working people of Nigeria. It would not surprise me to learn than some of this is fuelling Akinola and buying other third world Anglican support. He is, after all, the principal Nigerian actor on the world scene, making a bid to move the leadership of Anglicanism from Canterbury to Abuja. If you are an ambitious Nigerian tycoon looking to increase Nigerian influence in the world, this little project would be right at the top of the list.
That’s something I’ve been thinking about myself, Fr. Adam… M and I watched Blood Diamond over the weekend; films like that serve–not really to educate–but at least to confront us with the reality that daily life here and there are much more disparate than we often carry around in our heads.
I wonder what the connections are between religion and politics there. I almost get a sense that there is a situation much more analogous to a medieval/early medieval set of connections than what modern Americans think of. That is, family and patronage systems play a hugely important role in who gets to be allowed to have an education, become a priest, let alone become a bishop–and who gets stuck trying to tap gaslines to steal oil without detonating themselves and the rest of the neighborhood…
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