06/11/2010

Fireworks on November 3

The No Anglican Covenant campaign was launched on November 3, as I hope everyone noticed, and had a fair amount of media interest, e.g. Ekklesia, and here, Episcopal News Service,   If you haven't done so already may I invite you to scroll down to the foot of the welcome page and click 'Join us'.

The fireworks were supplied by Bishop Gregory Cameron, who ought to have know better, with an intemperate letter in the Church Times. (He was responding to the previous week's advert against the Covenant by Modern Church and Inclusive Church, not the NAC launch.) His choice of insults meant that a good proportion of subsequent media coverage (e.g. Daily Telegraph) focused on his words not on the issue.

The CT has put the letter outside their paywall here, with an article here.   They also added a vote box which, when I looked and voted was running 82% in favour of rejecting the Covenant and 17% for signing it (rounding error, I guess, explains the missing 1%) - 552 had signed.  In the scale of things it doesn't mean a lot, but straws in the wind may still be significant.

The most serious and effective response to Cameron I've seen was at Fr. Jake Stops the World.  He concludes,
Use whatever snarky names you can imagine, Bishop Cameron, but, regarding the signing of any current or future Anglican Covenant, this is one Anglican whose response must echo that of Bartleby the Scrivener; "I would prefer not to." 
Someone also directed me to Godwin's Law, which I hadn't heard before.  It states:
 "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."  and,
... there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress.
And there's always Madpriest.

1 comment:

  1. Godwin's Law is used to warn against the reductio ad Hitlerem form of argument.

    ReplyDelete