{"id":10116,"date":"2006-01-11T10:42:59","date_gmt":"2006-01-11T15:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2006\/01\/11\/10116.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:53:48","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:53:48","slug":"words-words-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2006\/01\/11\/words-words-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Words, words, words"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It seems, to borrow the headline from the Danbury (CT) News-Times, that Brookfield church sign sends signal<\/a>. No, not wireless. Signifies, you understand. Sends a rhetorical signal. As you might expect a sign to do. But Your Humble Blogger brings this up because some Gentle Readers may be particularly interested in the specifics of the matter.\n

It seems that the sign in front of St. Paul’s has been replaced, and where the old sign proclaimed that the church was Episcopal<\/I>, the new sign declares that it is Anglican<\/I>. Why? Well, for those who have not been following this issue, there is, hmm, how to say it, significantly impaired communion within the Anglican Church worldwide and the US Episcopal Church, which is in effect the American church within that organization. The US Episcopal Church, which does acknowledge the Primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a very nice madman named Rowan who is, I’m afraid, between the rock and the proverbial, has allowed its New Hampshire members to elect a gay man to serve them and lead them as their bishop. Oh, there are a lot of people who don’t like that. No, indeed.\n

So when the people of St. Paul’s, Brookfield, decided to style themselves Anglican<\/I> rather than Episcopalian<\/I>, what is signified is that they align themselves with the worldwide, rather than US church. More specifically, they don’t want gay bishops. Not that they are being asked to accept a gay bishop for the Connecticut diocese, but they don’t want the apostolic succession to include gay bishops, and they don’t want their church to affirm the election of gay bishops.\n

No, there’s more to it than homosexuality. The issue of His Grace, Bishop Gene, is in some sense a wedge; every Episcopal church must now face issues of Primacy, of communion worldwide and nationwide, and of obedience and hierarchy. In short, each congregation must either take sides or at least face the question of taking sides. Each must prepare to take sides. This is actually quite serious; even in the US, there are a lot of people, particularly a lot of Anglicans, who take worldwide communion seriously, and will find themselves prioritizing communion with, say, their parents and their childhood congregation above (or below) their own theological and political interpretations. It’s a bitch to choose.\n

However, that’s for them to decide, and although I, for one, am v-v-very interested to see what’s going to happen next, it scarcely calls for action on my part. The problem for me is that in conversation I regularly refer to persons in the US Episcopal church as Anglicans. Mostly, of course, because I am a pathetic Anglophile, but also because (to me, the pathetic Anglophile) the distinguishing characteristic of the church is the Primacy of the Archbishop of Canturbury, and the worldwide communion and apostolic succession that derive in large part from that primacy.\n

So. I think the correct thing for me to do is to stop using Anglican<\/I> to refer to US Episcopals, and to use Episcopalian<\/I> instead. On the other hand, I’m reluctant, rhetorically, to allow the conservatives to define terms here. Defining terms, claiming terms really, is one of the most powerful rhetorical tricks there is, and I don’t think the pro-New Hampshire side should necessarily cede the ground here. On the other other hand, I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, and I don’t want to be misunderstood. I certainly don’t want to imply by my speech that I support the conservative side, which I do not. I believe, based on this article and on the fact that it was absolutely clear to me the moment I heard about the changed sign what was being, er, signified by it, that a person might reasonably infer from my preference for Anglican<\/I> over Episcopal<\/I> a theological stance that is not my true one (to the extent that I have a theological horse in this proverbial). Feh. What do you think, Gentle Readers?\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems, to borrow the headline from the Danbury (CT) News-Times, that Brookfield church sign sends signal. No, not wireless. Signifies, you understand. Sends a rhetorical signal. As you might expect a sign to do. But Your Humble Blogger brings…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17658,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10116\/revisions\/17658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}