Patient and holy listening

From here:

At the end of a dialogue held Feb. 24 to 27 in Dar es Salaam, the bishops expressed a commitment to “continued engagement” and announced plans to meet again. They encouraged other bishops to develop similar networks for dialogue and mission.

“We have been engaged in a process of patient and holy listening, as Anglicans, coming from a wide diversity of contexts and theological positions, who have chosen to listen to one another,” the bishops said in a joint document called A Testimony of Grace, released March 1.

While discussions have not been solely focused on sexuality, the bishops said the sensitivity of the topic required them to approach it with “mutuality and humility and prayer in listening and in speaking as we seek together for God’s wisdom.”

What a load of old bollocks. Does anyone seriously think that the early church would have taken hold of peoples’ imagination, conquered empires and founded civilisations by “a process of patient and holy listening”?

No? Me neither.

Rev. Keith Nethery in the world of blogs

Rev. Keith Nethery is becoming rather alarmed (page 2) – disturbed even – at what he reads on blogs:

What does it mean to study something? How do we go about discussing an issue?
I spend considerable time reading blogs and various media from around the world on things Anglican. In doing this, there is something becoming more and more obvious to me and it is alarming. Now let me say first that I do NOT just read one side of the story. The blogs that I have marked for daily consumption cover the entire scale of theological opinion. What bothers me is that I see some disturbing trends in how we answer the two questions that I began with.

My understanding of study is that one will find a variety of opinions and see how that informs the thoughts that they possessed going into said study. More and more, it seems to me, that study is another term for a determination to prove the “other” wrong……

When folks search “Anglican” on their computers, it is scarey what they will find masquerading as the true face of who we are. If the foregoing statement was posted on many of the blogs I read daily, it would be followed by an immediate swell of condemnation from people on both ends of the spectrum, because discussion and study have become code words for further opportunity to demand agreement for one’s place on the scale.

This comment by the very same Rev. Nethery tends to show that he is less than eager to take his own advice when he feels called upon to show that those of us who “haunt the far right side of Anglicanism” are in sore need of “a dose of reality.” ­

Job well done in this post and in the discussion with David on Samizdat. I’ve had more than one such conversation with David, Warren and the others that haunt the far right side of Anglicanism that ended similarly – oh, but we’re right and you’re wrong because we say so, thank you for coming and come back again so we can tell you how right we are. I honestly think that we need to bust into their world every once now and again to give them a dose of reality.

The exchange in question is here and, as these things go, was reasonably civil and entirely devoid of the phrase – or idea – “oh, but we’re right and you’re wrong because we say so.”

Rev. Nethery’s solution (page 2) to all this seems to be:

My oft unpopular position is that there is always room to be further informed and to weigh more ideas.

Doubtless this is a remedy that he wishes those of us that infest the swamps of Anglicanism’s right would embrace, but one – in spite of protestations to the contrary – in which he is reluctant to dabble himself: that must be because we are just spinning:

Even one of ANIC’s spinning best bloggers can’t draw more than a comment or two posting on Holy Post at the National Post.

I can’t help wondering whether what is really eating Rev. Nethery is the fact that there are people who disagree with him; and they just won’t shut up.