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This page last updated 5 March 2018  

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 We usually do not publish letters written in response to other letters.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 the week of 26 February - March 4 2018

Like all letters to the editor everywhere, these letters express 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.

There are often comments about our front-page letters on the Anglicans Online Facebook page. You might like to have a look.

Ashes to no?

You seem to have forgotten that our Lord tells us to wash our faces during our period of fasting. There can be no occasion for pride for something we regard simply as a helpful liturgical practice and not mandated by the Gospel. Surely it causes us no inconvenience of discomfort. Is it an effective tool of evangelism? I would say not. It strikes me as another manifestation of our consumer culture. If someone does not have the time to reorient their lives to attend one of the many liturgies offered on Ash Wednesday, then "ashes to go" is simply another choice which promotes consumerism and not discipleship. And, of course, having ashes on one's forehead says nothing at all about our all important internal disposition to repentance and amendment of life.

Fr. Carlton Kelley
St. John's Episcopal
Bellefonte, PA
CARLTONHOME20@GMAIL.COM
26 February 2018

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

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