"Excited"
How Rowan Williams and his ideas were received at the Anglican Synod, in the words of those who were there. They are responding to Ruth Gledhill of the Times.
posted by wretchardthecat at 2/12/2008 09:35:00 PM
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30 Comments:
Either the archbishop backpeddled at warp speed, or all these folks are bonkers.
He didn't, and they are bonkers. Or, to paraphrase an old BBC series on England, whatever happened to Anglican England?
There is a great quote in Gledhill's post:
"Alan Hamilton in The Times notes that Christianity thrives on nothing so well as persecution and spotted that the Archbishop chose to define his self-avowed sin by a word that does not exist. 'So, Christians: to pride, lust and the rest, add the eighth deadly sin of “unclarity” – a word that is obscure enough not to appear in the Oxford English Dictionary.' "
A sin indeed. Where are the grammar and rhetoric police when you need them?
The chattering class is sitting in a rickety old rowboat in the middle of the Thames when one of them comments that the occupant in the stern is busily chopping a hole in the floor. The others join in and a vigorous conversation ensues about the shape and craftsmanship of the axe.
They're bonkers, but no crazy imams are issues death threats against them.
Something occured to me reading Spengler's recent article on William's idiocy. Spengler talks about the European politicians who require bodyguards because they've received death threats from speaking out against Sharia, and no-go zones, and the like.
It reminded me of Imperial Japan. In the 20's and 30's, Japan essentially went politically insane because junior Army officers would assasinate any politician that didn't toe the militant line. Eventually, all that was left were the rabid and those they had cowed.
Europe has one chance - now - to stop the madness. If the death threats and intimidation go on much longer, there will be no turning back, and Europe will commit suicide just as Imperial Japan did, dragged along by nutcases with warped upbringings.
The chattering class tells us that we should be nice to aliens because a long time ago our colonialist ancestors were not nice to them.
Although the word has only recently been coined globalization has been going on for a very long time. The military prowess of the Han Dynasty pushed the Mongol human tsunami West. The crashing waves mixed Mongols and locals into Huns. The ripples lifted and carried the Huns all the way into Central Europe which in turn persuaded the Germanic tribes that an extended vacation in sunny Italy was not such a bad idea after all. It became a great idea when Odoacer decided that the Emperor's crown looked better on him than on some weak willed Roman with the ironically rich and pretentious name of Romulus Augustulus.
We should be surprised at the unpleasant consequences of settling millions of aliens who are at the very best indifferent to our cultural values? Germanic tribes fielded the Roman army and kept the Empire going for several generations. Are a few years of cheap labor worth the bill the British and other Europeans will be getting in a much shorter time?
I think that Global Warming, contradictory science notwithstanding, is such a big, important issue to the chattering class because they can fill their day and feel good about trying to make the world a better place for the children without ever having to confront the real issues that will shape their children's' world. A pox be upon them.
Why are there no adults among those folks who control the Conversation? Have we spent the last 40 years educating our children to grow up as idiots?
Does the worst-case scenario, bloody ultra-nationalist backlash brought about by these suicidal policies' failure to protect the center, make anyone else think of "Pink's" turn to the dark side (if only in his mind)) in the film version of Pink Floyd's The Wall?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FphuBPNYcWo
The Show Must Go On and Run Like Hell fro the film (obviously inspired visually by the nazis)
Of course "Pink's" descent is driven by his brutalization by an authoritarian old-school British education and further alienation with the death of his father in WW2. Roger Waters' paranoid vision was fueled by his contempt for an admittedly stodgy right-bourgeois England -- how ironic that his worst vision may yet come to life because the ascendant *Left's* insanity may leave no choice but out-and-out xenophobia and *real* hate for any protection?
Is this blindness and ineptitude we are witnessing another Weimar Republic in the making?
Link fixed
excerpt from The Wall on YouTube
Excellent commet Peter Boston. Real history is being made while we sleep, there on the southern border.
The aliens that invaded Rome, I've read that most of them came in slowly, the living looked good, they came in small groups, a lot of them.
The pseudonymous Ibn Warraq writing in WSJ City Journal:
The great ideas of the West -- rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy -- are superior to any others devised by humankind. It was the West that took steps to abolish slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in Africa, where rival tribes sold black prisoners into slavery. The West has secured freedoms for women and racial and other minorities to an extent unimaginable 60 years ago. The West recognizes and defends the rights of the individual: we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live lives of our choosing.
In short, the glory of the West, as philosopher Roger Scruton puts it, is that life here is an open book. Under Islam, the book is closed. . . .
[O]ther parts of the world recognize Western superiority. When other societies such as South Korea and Japan have adopted Western political principles, their citizens have flourished. It is to the West, not to Saudi Arabia or Iran, that millions of refugees from theocratic or other totalitarian regimes flee, seeking tolerance and political freedom.
Self delusion, or perhaps confusion (Mae Culpa) between practical tribal form of justice and Islamic law. The two take on similar appearance but are wholly separate.
I gather The Arch thinks he can influence the outcome of Shari'a application, by participating in the process. There is unclarity (lol) as to how a non muslum can participate in any role other than observer or applicant.
I think Arch Willy Pink's lost his head. Fortunately thus far it is only a figurative loss.
Spengler in another one of his essays (I'm paraphrasing broadly) made the point that the European intelligentsia is desperately looking to surrender... as long as it is not to the hated Christians. Given that the Marxists are a fading memory, that only leaves the Greens and Islam.
Also, the reaction of the Anglican hierarchy so far is almost frighteningly like that found in the surviving pastoral letters from the Nestorian, Syriac, and Greek Bishops during the last Muslim take over.
I never thought that I would say this in a public forum, but pray and give to missionaries. I really think that they are our best hope.
"There is unclarity (lol) as to how a non muslum can participate in any role other than observer or applicant."
I'm afraid you mean "supplicant".
I listened to the people on utube above.
Apparently the archbishop was preaching to the choir.
From what I could see the christian clerics were so discouraged that their God in whom none believed--had so little effect on secular society that they were willing to reach out to muslims to see if their God would have some effect.
El Baboso said...
Also, the reaction of the Anglican hierarchy so far is almost frighteningly like that found in the surviving pastoral letters from the Nestorian, Syriac, and Greek Bishops during the last Muslim take over.
/////////////////
this is exactly right.
do you happen to know whether the Nestorian, Syriac, and Greek Bishops were arian or trinitarian?
The vandals of north africa & spain were all arian. They had no real theological problem with islam because neither believed Jesus is fully God as well as fully Man--ie neither held to the nicean creed.
The Anglican Church in Europe is gone. Dead.
It lives on in Africa and Asia, a shining beacon of faith and enlightenment. Galling to an atheist like me, but better than the most of the other alternatives.
I should know; I'm teaching in an Anglican school!
Newscaper said "Does the worst-case scenario, bloody ultra-nationalist backlash brought about by these suicidal policies' failure to protect the center" remind...
Never saw the movie, but in another context, do remember the "soccer (football) hooligans" who could/can kick up a fair riot when they get upset enough. The thing to remember is that they haven't gotten sufficiently upset....., yet. There are far more of them than the CofE hierarchy and will, I expect, have a much more decisive say in the matter than the CofE.
I am sadly not surprised at the amount of rot and the completeness of it in the CofE. We see similar in the Episcopal Church in the US. No wonder the thing is coming apart.
herb,
Do watch the video at the fixed link I posted -- its about 7 minutes I think. It's enlightening/frightening WRT what could be unleashed if things get bad enough and the people's legitimate concerns have no other outlet.
These clowns do at least illustrate very well why the 'Church of England' imploded so thoroughly on its own turf.
I really don't see why we should get all worked up about this. These halfwits, are they people I'd want on my team and want to defend? My answer is no.
Its true that the doctrine that Jesus is both fully God and fully Man sounds crazy. imho congregations can't hold both ideas in their heads at the same time so typically they go back and forth.
That said, imho the Nicean doctrine solves the problem posed in the 1st millenia and represented in various civilizations by gods mating with men & women to form such things as the minotaur or centaurs among the Greeks or the elephant men among the Hindu Indians.
The problem is this: How do you live in both time and eternity.
Jesus solves the problem in his person by being both fully Man and fully God.
Newscaper: I made it thru most of the video.
I also have watched a couple of cuts from "Triumph of the Will" and two or three of Obama's campaign speeches.
You are absolutely correct but
the objective legitimacy of the people's concerns is quite beside the point. If (When) the people believe themselves under threat and unprotected by the State, then the people will address the threat. They wont need symbolic tools.
It was said (I think here some time ago) that Europe has dealt harshly with existential threats before.
Williams and the rest of the CofE hierarchy are in denial if they think this can be mumbled away with the usual platitudes. Take the muslims position for what they say it is: they will either convert us or kill us.
Charles,
The thing about the Arians, besides their heretical views (and I do hold Arianism as a heresy)is that they never even understood or appreciated the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, let alone his divinity. If they had truly absorbed THAT lesson, the barbarity, savagery, violence, thievery, rapine, and viciousness of al illah and his minions should have shocked them into resisting the Arab invaders more vigorously.
Those gathered in appreciative groupthink over Archbishop Williams' pronouncements about Islamic Law clearly do not know either their Christianity very well or Islamic scripture, law, and jihad history very well. If they had, it would stiffen their resolve to resist this invader, who would impose a savagery and violence upon them utterly shocking to decent sensibilities.
The contrast between al illah and the Yahweh and Father of Jesus could not be more stark, as their qualities are utterly opposite.
I have read literally hundreds of opinions on this subject, and I still cannot understand why ANYONE would choose to surrender to these savages anything or the entirety of our civilization.
He who lives by the sword, shall die by the sword. Given the threat that they pose, at some point we are going to have to be the agents of God's justice on this earth and give them what they deserve.
No wonder the British lost to us in the Revolutionary War, and no wonder they needed us to defeat Nazi Germany.
The British no longer have the wisdom to recognize evil when they trip over it, and they no longer have the courage to call evil by its name or to defeat it. The defunct British Empire is about to discover the pleasures of Totalitarian Islamic Sharia Law, just as the Byzantine Empire discovered it.
So long old man - you don't deserve freedom unless you value it and sacrifice for it.
herb,
"They wont need symbolic tools."
Yep, soocer hooligans need nothing more than the occasional Union Jack.
On a related note, one thing that really bugged me about the film V for Vendetta was the notion of the original author that he was envisioning the logical end of *Thatcherism*. WTF?
I was into some of the less cacaphonous punk and hardcore music in the mid 80s and it was utterly insane how th emore political bands such as the Dead Kennedies were convinced, absolutely and literally convinced that Reagan and Ed Meese were about to open the concentration camps.
Newscaper said "it was utterly insane how th emore political bands such as the Dead Kennedies were convinced, absolutely and literally convinced that Reagan and Ed Meese were about to open the concentration camps."
Stormrider said "The British no longer have the wisdom to recognize evil when they trip over it, and they no longer have the courage to call evil by its name or to defeat it."
Newscaper meet Stormrider; Stormrider meet Newscaper.
EOM
fred: I have read literally hundreds of opinions on this subject, and I still cannot understand why ANYONE would choose to surrender to these savages anything or the entirety of our civilization.
Simply put, because that would mean having to actually fight, die and kill for them. As far as folks such as the archbishop are concerned, dying would actually be the least unpleasant of the three; the abandonment of their cherished pacifist MC ideals is a prospect worse than death and loss of civilization combined.
But don't, on any account, miss Iowahawks little ditty. And my own modest contribution is a riff on a famous Burma Shave sign, directed none too subtly at the bish:
If daisies are
Your fav'rite flower
Just keep suggesting
Burqa power...
newscaper said...
"There is unclarity (lol) as to how a non muslum can participate in any role other than observer or applicant."
I'm afraid you mean "supplicant".
No, Supplicants seek something from God.
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