The Web We Weave

The fifty or so wardens and other lay leaders who attended last month’s wardens’ conference got a real treat. The afternoon speaker was Patrick Herold, president of Digital Faith, Inc., the firm with which the Diocese has contracted for a new web site that will involve both the diocese and as many of its parishes as are interested in participating. Pat is an interesting fellow; he’s patented several powerful communication technologies, and he got into working with Episcopal Churches during time in Atlanta with the Episcopal Media Center.

The luncheon presentation was nothing less than a capsule history of human communication over the past 10,000 years or so. Think of stories around the campfire – stone tablets – the printing press – telegraph – telephone – the web. That was the substance, but his version was both more eloquent and more humorous.

But as he began digging into what the Diocese is trying to do on the web, Herold made a very important point. “Munch of what folks are trying to do with religion on the web,” he said, “is really very thin. I can put up my sermon or my comment, and folks can comment on what I’m doing. You can call that a community, but it really isn’t.”

And that, of course, is just the point. Pat went on to describe what we’re trying to do with the new diocesan web site. This is not an effort to create a new online community. Instead, it’s an effort to provide a set of tools and information that folks who are already a part of our diocesan community can use to strengthen their relationships with one another. We will do it by sharing, by commenting, and I suspect, by realizing that the joys, challenges, and struggles that we feel locally exist elsewhere as well.

No one congregation has either all the problems or all the talent and solutions. We hope our new site will provide a platform that will help both people and parishes do better in their mission. The new site should be on line in the next week or two. We hope you’ll drop by and participate.

The Post-Colonial Thing

Youth can sometimes bring a certain innocence to complex issues. So I was intrigued to read a short explication of the trials facing global Anglicanism this morning written by a staffer for, would you believe, the Yale Daily News.

I found this student’s words merely charming until I realized that the writer—female, I think—appeared to be Chinese, and because of her heritage, she had a very particular view of the British. To wit: “If you grew up in America reading about the exploits of Paul Revere, you thought of the British as the redcoats. But since I grew up in China, I thought of them as top hat-wearing drug dealers who peddled yapian by the boatload.”

Well… OK, then.

Despite past quarrels, Americans have always had a sort of affection for all things English. The same, apparently, is not true in other former colonies. I suspect that one form of this post-colonial lashing out is the glee with which the provinces of the southern hemisphere thumb their noses at the Church of England, Rowan Williams, and worst of all, the Americans. At at least one level, this is an argument more about power than theology. You messed with us; now we’ll mess with you.

Now, with that all said, our young Chinese reporter goes on to provide a succinct summary of why the Anglican Communion may shortly be neither Anglican nor a communion. You can read it all here.