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Hallo again to all.

It is the time of year, at least here in the Northern hemisphere, when churches intensify and focus their asking for money. Many lectionaries include 1 Kings 17:8-16 or Mark 12:38-44 about now.

Despite all of the pageantry, prooftexting, philosophising, press releases, and passion of the past six months, we continue to believe that this whole sex argument is really about identity and power and not about God, or even really about sex.

In modern life, money is power. It's sad, but you know it's so. We've all seen rich people and rich organisations buy elections, buy public opinion, buy market share, or even just buy enemies.

While there are well-known examples of money given to churches going into the pockets of the man standing in the pulpit asking for it, we observe that, in general, money given to Anglican churches really is used for worthwhile purposes.

We doubt it really matters to God whether the Anglican communion is split or not. It matters a good deal to us, His flock, but probably not to God. We'd bet that it matters a great deal to God that the good works done by, and in the name of, Anglican churches be kept up.

We've noticed that those who want to split the church are asking that money be used as a weapon to help ensure that happens. Money is power, after all.

Anglicans Online has about 200,000 readers. Many of you are pledging money to your churches right now. Your editors intend to pledge our money faithfully, but to minimise the chance that it will be caught up in either side of power struggles, or used to bolster power. There will always be sickness, hunger, pain, crisis, ignorance, and fear. We are proud of the work that Anglican churches have done through the centuries to help mitigate them. We think it would be a terrible shame if the struggles for sex and power caused more children to go hungry or more diseases to go untreated. Do you?

See you next week.

Cynthia McFarland cmcf@anglicansonline.org	Brian Reid reid@anglicansonline.org

Last updated: 9 November 2003
URL: http://anglicansonline.org