Anglican introversion

Retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu told the BBC that the Anglican communion was spending too much of its time and energy on debating differences over gay priests and same sex marriages - a subject, he said, that had now become "an extraordinary obsession". The crises in Zimbabwe and Darfur, corruption and HIV/Aids were not getting enough attention, said Tutu. To which one might add, for American and British Christians, such things as the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.

In his blog Journeys in between, Matt Stone remarks that "Consumerism, pluralism, spirituality, collapse of Christian credibility and moral authority in the media and public discourse ... don't these issues deserve some attention? I don't recall Jesus being that sex obsessed."

The Anglican obsession with sex has led to some disturbing changes in the attitudes of the West. As one columnist put it

But the largest adjustments are coming on the religious left. For decades it has preached multiculturalism, but now, on further acquaintance, it doesn't seem to like other cultures very much. Episcopal leaders complain of the threat of "foreign prelates,'' echoing anti-Catholic rhetoric of the 19th century. An activist at one Episcopal meeting urged the African bishops to "go back to the jungle where you came from.'' Not since Victorians hunted tigers on elephants has the condescension been this raw.

Perhaps these are not changes in attitude, though, but rather the multicultural mask being stripped off, and revealing the paternalism and imperialism that was there all along, and had been covered up, as I noted in an earlier posting in this blog: Mission is a two-way street... or is it?.

One of the Anglican blogs that appears quite frequently on blogrolls and is recommended as a good one is Father Jake stops the world. Yet when I read it recently it seemed to be almost entirely concerned with the internal politics of the Anglican Communion. There were older post on other issues, but now sexual politics within the Anglican Communion seem to be the dominant theme. The same seems to be true of other Anglican blogs, and I've seen it in other forums such as Usenet newsgroups. The sexual obsession seems to have rendered many Anglicans incapable of seeing anything else, and to have almost paralysed the Anglican Communion.

Left behind

When Patricia de Lille broke from the old fuddy-duddies in the PAC I admired her. I even voted for her party in the last election. The PAC seemed to be stuck in a time warp, doomed to relive the politics of 1959-1961 in an endless loop.

So when Patricia de Lille broke from the PAC and founded the Independent Democrats, it seemed like a Great Leap Forward.

It now transpires, however, that the great leap forward fell short of the 21st century. It was a leap from 1960 to 1980. Patricia de Lille does not know much about the blogosphere, and has been complaining about some anonymous blogger saying nasty things about one of her colleagues, and is demanding that blogs be censored.

Americans might say to Patricia, "Get a life".

I say to Patricia: get a blog
.
She will need to do that if she wants to communicate with voters, since her greatest political asset, Tony Leon, has ridden off into the sunset.

What's happening to the Anglicans?

It seems as though racist imperialist Brit Anglicans and sexual-orientationist Tanzanian Anglicans are going at each other like Kilkenny cats.

Of course, I could be wrong...: Where is Tanzania?
Is it that island off the bottom of Australia?

It's really rather sad.