Clash of cultures

Just back from our diocesan clergy conference. It was just 24 hours, which was not long enough for me. Although I find myself resenting having to rearrange my diary, I know that on these occassions, the thing that matters most is meeting people and there was not quite enough time for me to feel that we had done enough of that. I’d have liked us to discuss something that mattered, and I’m not sure we did.

We had good input though. The headline speaker for Wednesday was Lorna Finley, who came and spoke to us about dealing with the media. Her party-piece was a series of imagined headlines from newspapers reporting on the story of the Prodigal Child. Excellent.

Today the headline act was Rowan Williams. He spoke to us of poetry.

One frustration that I found was that it started to feel to me as though quite a few of my colleagues were frightened of the media but much more accepting of poetry. Rowan William’s experience of the firestorm over Sharia Law earlier in the year was very obviously in our minds. That kind of effect inevitably induces fear. It felt as though people felt much more comfortable listening to RW talking about medieval Welsh poetic structures. (And here, I must  admit that RW was the best speaker on the structure of medieval Welsh poetry that I’ve ever heard at a clergy conference).

The thing that troubled me was that we never seemed to connect the two. I’m a person who lives in a soundbite, internet-driven, headline culture. And I love it. What none of us seemed able to vocalise during the conference is that this same culture is the most successful, witty, influential poetic culture that the world has ever seen. We turn our backs on it at our peril.

Comments

  1. Robin says

    Eamonn, what I object to about Rowan Williams is his insincerity – the way he said one thing and did another, and betrayed first Jeffrey John, then all the gay people who had looked to him for succour and finally Gene Robinson.

    I would gladly share Holy Communion with Peter Akinola and Henry Orombi (sincere men with whom I disagree, but whom I believe to be doing their utmost to follow Christ), but not with Rowan Williams, who has committed the sin of betrayal and has shown no signs of repenting of it.

  2. I’ve always taken some comfort that the story that we have been spun is that Jesus shared bread with Judas even knowing he would betray him.

    Indeed, as the Gospel of John is so strangely ambivalent about the Eucharistic actions, one could surmise from chapter 13 that sharing generously with someone whom you know will betray you is within the essence of the sacrament itself.

    What was good enough for Himself is good enough for me. And anyway, every time I eat the bread and drink the wine at communion, I’ve no notion that I do it only with those present. I do it in the company of the saints in heaven and the saints on earth.

    Sinnners all.

    Isn’t that the point of it all?

  3. Robin says

    As I’ve said, you’re a better man than I am, Kelvin. Rowan Williams’ conduct has filled me so full of horror and disgust that I simply couldn’t go to Communion were he there – the problem being the state of my own soul, because in his presence I would not be in any fit state to acknowledge the Lord.

    I think Rowan Williams is the only human being living who would have this effect on me. I simply don’t have words to express my revulsion from someone who could behave in so insincere, cynical and callous a way without showing any sign of repentance or even regret.

  4. Obviously I wasn’t privy to private conversations between Rowan and Jeffrey John, but I thought it had been reported that the latter (although obviously not happily) had accepted Rowan’s actions as being the price he pays for fufilling the demands of the Job. Surely Rowan wishes the likes of Akinola didn’t exist? I of course think he could be doing far more than he is to bring justice to LGBT people, but do think it sensible to take evangelical threats to reallign and send quota elsewhere seriously. Although it’s perhaps sad and cynical to appraise a Bishop in such “Clinton is better than Bush” terms.

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