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This page last updated 27 October 2008
Anglicans Online last updated 20 August 2000

Letters to AO

EVERY WEEK WE PUBLISH a selection of letters we receive in response to something you've read at Anglicans Online. Stop by and have a look at what other AO readers are thinking.

Alas, we cannot publish every letter we receive. And we won't publish letters that are anonymous, hateful, illiterate, or otherwise in our judgment do not benefit the readers of Anglicans Online. We usually do not publish letters written in response to other letters. We edit letters to conform with standard AO house style for punctuation, but we do not change, for example, American spelling to conform to Canadian orthography. On occasion we'll gently edit letters that are too verbose in their original form. Email addresses are included when the authors give permission to do so.

If you'd like to respond to a letter whose author does not list an email, you can send your response to Anglicans Online and we'll forward it to the writer.

Letters from 20 to 26 October 2008

Like all letters to the editor everywhere, these letters are the opinions of the writers and not Anglicans Online. We publish letters that we think will be of interest to our readers, whether we agree with them or not. If you'd like to write a letter of your own, click here.

Our server computer appears to have lost most letters to the editor for a period of several weeks, due to a configuration error that we made when moving hastily to a new server computer on 2 September. If you sent us a letter during September and it is still topical, we encourage you to re-submit, and we hope you will accept our apologies for our software mistake.

Anyone can say what is wrong

The Primate of Australia like many other church people has protested at the ending of the Religion Report on our most intelligent radio station, ABC Radio National. I was surprised to find bloggers on the Sydney Diocesan site approving the abolition because, they wrote, the presenter was a Roman Catholic critical of Sydney Diocese and because the program presented a variety of views.(Eight other specialist programs have also been dropped.) I am dismayed, however, now to find that, according to your report,Sydney's spokesman,Bishop Forsyth,also approves of the ending of the program.

As a child and teenager, I grew up in a middle-of-the-road Sydney parish (in the 40s one third of the parishes fell into that category - very few do now). Later in life, I was Rector for 22 years of a similar (BCP) Sydney parish, and for 10 years I have been an honorary chaplain (unauthorised by the Diocese) in a large hospital with many C. of E. patients, although a hospital where in all that time we have found Uniting Church, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist and Congregational people willing to help (and Muslims and Buddhists) but not one Anglican priest.

Traditionally liberal in theology, culturally and liturgically conservative - an endangered species, and banned from preaching at the main services in my local church for 8 years, I am sorry that the extremes on both sides have grown so much stronger over the years in the Church of Australia and in some places elsewhere, and not least that my Diocese though growing rich financially has now grown very poor when it comes to willingness to enter into dialogue with Anglicans who are not dinky-or to give a place for them in its councils - or room for other views in its large, glossy monthly

Next year it is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on "Connect 09" hoping still for the growth in numbers in "Bible-based" churches that the last 10 years' of increasingly narrow "evangelism" has not achieved. For example, 750,000 Gospels of S.Luke are to be distributed (great!) but with an Introduction that in this Darwin anniversary year begins with Adam and Eve! That will hardly connect with many thinking people including listeners to the former Religion Report.

In general, I dislike those who only complain. Churchill said "any fool can say what is wrong". Despite my now ancient,agnostic mind, there is "joy in my heart" for there are always so many blessings that we can count, including the fresh insights from those whose outlook and gifts are different to our own. But despite the very real riches that Sydney Diocese can share, its extreme,un-Anglican, superficial puritanism, I think, is only alienating people from our Church and aiding the forces of secularism.

When the Diocese is so wealthy and so powerful, Anglicans and Episcopalians elsewhere need to be aware.

The Revd Dr John Bunyan
St John the Baptist's, Canberra
Campbelltown, New South Wales, AUSTRALIA
jrbpilgrim@bocnet.com.au
20 October 2008

Ne pas déranger

As a professional language translator and occasional essayist, I found your article on Anglicanism as the Anglican lingo very interesting. It does comfort one's soul to feel (no matter how wishful that may be), that one could walk into St. John's Anglican Church in Kuala Lumpur or St. James's in Edmonton and not need to...deranger les gens...as the French put it, in order to hear the Word.

Obi Udeariry
St Andrew's, Aladinma, Owerri
Owerri, NIGERIA
netwalker55@yahoo.es
20 October 2008

Your language needs fixed

As a long-time student of Pittsburghese, I can tell you that the proper expression for "have you had dinner (or another meal) is "Djeat jet?" not "Djeat yet?" as you have it. The correct negative answer is "No, jew?"

But it is a real dialect of American English, with many colorful expressions. I fell in love with Pittsburgh years ago...

Pierre Whalon
Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe
Paris, FRANCE
bishop@tec-europe.org
20 October 2008

(Ed: we'll red up our act.)

Do let courtesy prevail

Just a note to say thank you for fostering a fairly even-handed website.

I read a variety of “Anglican” websites from Thinking Anglicans to Virtue Online, and many in-between. While each of these reveals its bias, the actual commentary is quite rarely outrageous. On the other-hand, those that write-in/post to the other various sites spill gallons of virtual vitriol ink. Maybe you simply cull the letters which are of the same ilk, maybe those who write-in to Anglicans Online wish to be above that sort of writing, either way yours is a much more pleasant place from which to read. Keep up the great work and where disagreement exists let courtesy prevail.

blessings, Steve+

CH (CPT) Steven Rindahl
Still Looking for my parish
Fort Gordon, Georgia, USA
21 October 2008

(Ed: we rarely get vitriolic letters, and we never publish them. Which is probably why we rarely get them.)

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Earlier letters

We launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May 2003. All published letters are in our archives.

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