Pages

May 18, 2011

Sticky situations and language games: Anglican Covenant edition

- Subscribe (to)
- Accept
- Accede
- Receive
- Endorse
- Believe (in[to])
- Approve
- Support
- Endure
- Tolerate
- Decline
... ???

There is a language game here: What terms can we deploy that are gently reassuring but also nonbinding upon us? What language can we borrow to seem like willing participants but not also bear responsibility?

I suggest these distinctions would be made to seem irrelevant in a world in which the Anglican Covenant is made operational and the logic of Jesus -- that whoever is not against us is for us -- is turned on its ear, making us explicitly either for or against, pro or con. The point is to sweep as many provinces into the one camp as possible, create critical mass, and then use that leverage to move to predetermined outcomes.

Perhaps I am too fatalistic about this. That may be. I only desire to remain pragmatically realistic.

2 comments:

John B. Chilton said...

- to-stand-in-a-crucified-place (with)

The Rev. Torey Lightcap said...

Yes, John, to preach Christ, and him crucified. Did some province use this language, or am I making lemonade of it?