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.

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Letters from 27 November to 4 December 2005

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.

Plain English please

Forty years ago the Anglican Church of Canada commissioned a secular commentator, author and journalist, Pierre Berton, to write a Lenten book. The Canadian Church published his critique of religion and hypocrisy entitled, The Comfortable Pew. Last week's AO letter reminded me of that writer and that particular title. I began thinking also about numerous revisions of our Book of Common Prayer (into many languages and during many eras) and the depth and grandeur of Anglican language.

Discovering efforts being undertaken today to prevent the extinction of Yiddish may awaken us to recognize and share more widely the priceless treasures we have in Anglican devotional language. We celebrate our living faith conveyed in part by living languages. There are always dangers of misinterpretation when new revisions emerge, but by the same token, such revisions are opportunities for correcting mistakes or nuances of past revisions.

Preachers and pastors who study, pray and preach develop communication skills to a fine art. In the process they need to be alert to the trap of acquiescing into conforming to a "comfortable" in-house jargon whose meaning may only be understood or felt by the initiated. The challenge is to communicate and introduce our timeless faith to every generation without succumbing to jargon.

The Reverend Timothy Makoto Nakayama
St. Mark's Cathedral
Seattle, Washington, USA
frtim@yahoo.com
28 November 2005

Ndeèwo!

As an Igbo Catholic who avidly reads Anglicansonline for its Ecumenical benefits, I was really impressed with your recognition of the Igbo language in your last write up.

As we say in this part of the world, "More Grease to your elbow(s)" or to put it in that venerable Igbo language, "Jidenu nke unu ji!" for this. God love you all! (Ka Chukwu gozie unu nile!)

Uche Obisike
St. Eugene's
Aba, NIGERIA
29 November 2005

Those ordinations in the Diocese of Southwark

The Evangelical Union of Southwark Diocese has offered a response to the irregular ordinations which took place within the diocese on 2nd November 2005.

The text can be found on the SDEU website: www.sdeu.org.uk/news/news_top.html

Steve Doel
Southwark Diocesan Evangelical Union
London, UNITED KINGDOM
webmaster@sdeu.org.uk
1 December 2005

Earlier letters

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