Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Credibility of Anglican Communion Standing Committee openly questioned

Sneaky is as sneaky does.  The spanking brand new Anglican Communion "Standing Committee" wonders why questions are being raised about its legitimacy, where  - to quote the Anglican Communion General Secretary Kenneth Kearon - "the credibility of the Primates' Meeting and the ACC was being openly questioned by some and this criticism was increasingly focused on the Standing Committee itself.  

Well, Sarah Hey of StandFirm bats it right out of the park, focusing on this little gem from the ACO internally-generated "Q&A":
Q. I have heard it said that some churches get more votes than others. Why is that?
In the Council as a whole, those churches with the highest number of churchgoers may send a bishop, a priest or deacon and a lay representative to the ACC; churches in the middle category by number of churchgoers send a priest or deacon and a lay person, and the smaller churches send one representative, preferably a lay person. But it does not follow that the larger churches are over-represented on the Standing Committee – several members of the present Standing Committee were elected by the plenary Council from the representatives of the smallest churches, and the Chair is from a Province in the middle-sized category.
And what does Sarah say?
This is patently false.

First of all, note the clever shimmy at the words "But it does not follow that the larger churches are over-represented . . . "

That, of course, is not at all the issue. So the answer begins with a lie -- that the larger churches are the ones that receive more representatives to the ACC -- and then continues on with a spin following the lie, implying that the concerning issue is that "the larger churches are over-represented."
The issue of concern is that the larger churches -- the ones that the ACO does not like -- are under represented, not that they are over-represented. The ACO well knows this. What a sham and a disgrace. Have they no shame? Do they imagine that nobody reads their propaganda and smiles over their attempts?

Really. This is ridiculous. It's brazen. It's public. And it's noted by more and more people. Do they really think that they can get away with this kind of contemptible pravdaesque rhetoric forever?

Get thee hence to SF and read it all and compare it to Dr. Steve Noll's proposal the post following this one

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hey BB - no response to Mark Harris' response to you and S Hey?