Mike's musings

Apologising to the Archbishop of Canterbury

I attended a meeting today with the Bishop of Guildford and his communications officer on SecondLife, and what we should/could be doing there, alongside the leader of the Anglicans in SecondLife group, Mark Brown. We had a fantastic discussion, which should bear lots of fruit, and I had a good chat afterwards with Mark, who'd never met IRL before.

Beforehand, I turned up early to work out where to go, and phoned Mark to give him directions. I was standing in a corridor, giving suggestions down the phone, when who should walk towards me but Rowan Williams. He was chatting to somebody else, and I felt a little rude being on the phone in his palace, so finished the call and said "sorry" as he went past. He raised his eyebrows in a forgiving kind of a way, so I think we made a connection.

Labels: anglicans, secondlife

SecondLife

I popped round to SecondLife yesterday. The group of Anglicans there is starting to build a cathedral, which is pretty cool. Arkin, who runs BrownBlog is very keen to be developing a ministry in SecondLife, and has asked me to be involved. I'm really keen, but I'm not sure how it's going to work. Partly, I think we need to find a well-defined mission - and there are _so_ many opportunities in SecondLife, don't get me wrong - partly, I need to work out how much time I can commit, and how regular I can make it.

Labels: anglicans, secondlife

Dar Es Salaam

At the moment, the Primates of the Anglican communion are meeting in Dar Es Salaam to consider what to do about the fact that ECUSA (the Episcopal Church of the USA - US Anglicans) have appointed an openly gay bishop and have sanctioned blessings of gay partnerships in churches. Lots of the other parts of the Anglican church (which doesn't have a central power-base, or legal authority, unlike the Roman Catholic church) are very upset about this, and have threatened schism (a break in the church). In particular, a part of the Anglican church calling itself "the Global South" has set itself up against ECUSA, although there are groups within the US (e.g. CANA) who are also against the steps taken by ECUSA.

There are a number of blogs around on this, including a good videoblog and recordings of press conferences at AnglicanTV. You might also want to check out Thinking Anglicans, which has lots of links, and Changing Attitude blog. The last, by the way, assumes quite a lot of existing knowledge about the people and positions - it's worth reading back.

One of the really hard things that's happened this time round is that a group of 7 Primates have refused to participate in Holy Communion with the others. This is down from 14 on a meeting at Dromantine 2 years ago, but is a shocking, shocking move: it's hard to think of a stronger statement that people could make as Christians.

You might also want to look at the Anglican Communion Official Website.

Labels: anglicans, sexuality