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Letters from 19 to 26 September 2004

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Wrong analogy?

I AM AN AVID READER of Anglicans Online. I salute you and your staff for your service to Anglicans and the wider Christian community. But I take great exception to your front page editorial of Sunday 19 September 2004.

I believe that, with respect, your use of the US Constitutional settlement regarding slavery is not a good analogy/example for a solution to the current disputes in the Anglican Communion. I am an American of mixed race. While I recognize that compromise is a significant mechanism of resolving disputes in political life and even in religious life, the framers of the US Constitution made a highly fraught and ultimately tragic decision to allow black slavery.

I do not doubt that a failure to reach compromise on the issue of slavery would very likely have prevented the American federal union. But John Adams is said to have commented that failure to resolve slavery then and there would only result in greater conflict in further years, and history bore out this prediction. His son John Q. Adams wrote that,

Who but shall learn that freedom is the prize
Man still is bound to rescue or maintain;
That nature's God commands the slave to rise,
And on the oppressor's head to break the chain.
Roll, years of promise, rapidly roll round,
Till not a slave shall on this earth by found.

(From http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/language/quotes_alpha.html)

An additional website contains further "food for thought": http://abcnews.go.com/America/classroom/3.html

Comprehensiveness and compromise remain important to Anglican life and witness. But using the past example of an unholy bargain that immiserated millions is not an example for Anglicans today. I am no theologian, however, I urge you to consider the Council of Jerusalem's agreement on welcoming Gentiles as members of the Christian community instead.

Again, I thank you and your staff for your dedicated service. I enjoy Anglicans Online very much, but I object to your particular analogy in this case.

Matthew Chen
St Paul's Manuka, Canberra, Australia
Canberra, ACT, AUSTRALIA
mecaus@aol.com
21 September 2004

Earlier letters

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