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Hallo again to all. We've been privileged to list at Anglicans Online the web sites of many Anglican religious orders and we've usually found those sites thoughtful, informative, but, well, not dramatic. We've come across a site for the Roman Catholic Benedictine community at Tyburn (London, England) that's anything but bland. Here is a cloistered community using the Web to its best to give the outside world an extraordinary glimpse into its life. (Note: To take advantage of the site, you should be using a 4.0 browser or above, either Netscape or Explorer. And it would be helpful to have the free Shockwave plug-in. Details at the site.) It would be easy to say that such web sites are over the top for religious organisations or the church in general. But here's a counter opinion from the prior of St Michael's Abbey, about his leading-edge web site: 'Monks have always loved good art and the written word and it is right that monks today should not only be up to date with modern media but should, as they have always done, lead'. That's something for all of us to ponder. This week we welcome to Anglicans Online the Diocese of Dunedin (New Zealand) and its cathedral, as well as the cathedral of the Diocese of Panama and the cathedral of the Diocese of Algoma (Canada). And we're pleased to link an ambitious unofficial web site for the Province of Brasil. If you've ever wanted contact names and numbers for clergy and bishops in that large province, this site gives you all the details. And it's much more than a directory. All our most recent links are in New This Week, as usual. Back to the issue of communication on the Web: as we viewed the live coverage this week of the assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and their vote to accept the Concordat (see the News Centre for details), we were struck by the high quality and usefulness of their web site. Not only is the overall ELCA web site a state-of-the-art marvel, but their site with coverage of their Churchwide Assembly is a really good example of how to use this medium of the Internet for church communication. And their "Live from the Assembly" page is just breathtaking. We at Anglicans Online are aware of endless committee meetings in US and English churches, and presumably others as well, that waste hours discussing how best to use the Internet for church communication. We have a suggestion: Copy what the ELCA does. It doesn't get much better than that. We Anglicans are still arguing among ourselves about whether various stone-age pre-Internet technologies are somehow better. Get a grip, Anglican communicators. These ELCA people are leaving us in the dust. See you next week.
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updated: 22 August 1999 |