Jeremy, your failure to see the aggression in your question ought to be a lesson to you. As for me, I used to post here, but I no longer do, because I was pressed not to be anonymous. I only posted this time because you were acting in a similarly inappropriate way to Iconoclast. I'll leave it you to decide whether I'm hiding or using to cover to fire arrows. I will still look at threads here, but I won't post on them, unless it's because someone else is being leaned on because they need to be anonymous.

Jeremy, I think it's pretty clear that Iconoclast has a name, so you ask a pretty brutal and aggressive question. I think it's also pretty clear that Iconoclast chooses not to use that name here. I respect that decision, as do the Fulcrum team. Why don't you?

Well, as I have been singled out for the question, I shall reply. I have been a priest for longer than most people here have been alive. I no longer attend any church, and I  really don't know what to call myself in terms of the labels that people here are using, including the label 'christian'. I left my living and the practice of my faith following illness caused by relentless bullying by a senior collegue in holy orders. I suppose I read and contribute to church blogs because I think there might be some way I can recover my faith. All that I read by people like Tom Wright makes me think there is no place for me any longer in the Church of England, so I suppose i'm right in staying away.

I feel that this is not an account I wanted to give, but that a refusal to answer Stephen's direct question seems impossible. I shall not post here again. I hope that my retreat from this site will encourage Stephen and others of you here who are in holy orders to reflect that sometimes the hearty handshake, the pressing of the elbow, the request for an address you can visit, the insistent suggestion that you stay for coffee after the service can put off at least as many as they welcome. Anonymity is not always sinister. It can be a much-needed protection. Now that I have lost much of mine I shall leave you to it. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute that you offered me.  Goodbye.

Graham, Robert Runcie was, I think, correct. We do want the Anglican Communion. But, knowing what he felt about other things, I do not believe that he wanted it at the cost of what the Anglican Communion stands for.

We want the Anglican Communion because it follows the way of justice, toleration, intelligent and scholarly understanding of the Bible, human rights, partnership, engagement with the world, a regard for litugical tradition (when asked to describe the sort of Christian he was Runcie said he was a theological radical and a liturgical conservative - that's the Anglican tradition, what we're facing at the moment is a move towards theological conservatism and liturgical radicalism, not Runcie's thing at all).

What we see with the proposed Covenant is exactly what Runcie feared and spoke against, the triumph of the culture of one set of provinces against the unity of the Communion. Don't forget, it is not the TEC which has refused communion it is the African bishops who refused to share.

By all means let's bring Runcie into the argument, but only if we represent his views fairly, and we don't take one piece of his teaching out of the context of his whole life's work and teaching. He would be no friend to those who seek to tear the Communion apart with their Covenant and their refusal to recognise the Holy Orders of their brothers and sisters.

Nersen, I probably ought to tell you why I am not going to reply to you, rather than just ignoring your post to me.

You never seem to me to engage on any topic you post about. You just peddle your own rigid interpretation of a few texts, rather than listen and respond.

You seem to me to be always argumentative, rather than willing to discuss.

You monopolise this site, with an opinion on every matter, so that it seems more often to be Nersen's blog, rather than the Fulcrum site.

You respond so quickly to everything that it strikes me that all we ever get from you is a knee-jerk response, rather than a considered reply. I get no sense that you have ever sat down and thought about another person's point of view before you dash off your opposition.

All of the above lead me to think that it is not a good thing to engage with you, and I have no intention of encouraging you by doing so.

I hope you will understand that I do not mean to be rude when I ignore you, just that I think that to do so would be pointless and unhlpeful and would only lead to a situation where posted even more on this site than you already do.

Graham uses the image of a bunch of grapes. And he uses the expression 'doing one's own thing'. He does this point out that the two are imcompatible. Why? If we look at the biblical origin of the bunch of grapes image, then there's every reason to accept that 'doing one's own thing' is part of the point. If Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, then we are intimately linked. But the vine does one thing, the roots do another, the branches do another, the leaves do another, the grapes do another. And, even with the the grapes, the skin does one thing, the flesh does another, the seeds do another. Diversity of purpose everywhere, yet one plant. St Paul's image of the body is exactly the same. All the parts have different functions. Being and function are not opposed in the way that Graham suggests.

I see no problem in understanding TEC as the seeds of the future of the Church. I see no problem with understanding TEC as the fingertips of the body, delicately sensing the world around them.

As I see it, some evangelicals in the Church have taken it upon themselves to say that they are the head, not the members, and they are telling the other members what to do. Let the TEC get on with doing what it is doing, within the communion. If all provinces are to be the same, then you're expecting a leg to be an eye, and an ear to be a foot.  That's not what the biblical imagery demands, nor is it the experience of history. Whenever a centralised power in the church has demanded uniformity then schism always follows.

Jesus and Saint Paul counselled diversity. Let it happen.

Ooooops.  How important a single word is.

When I wrote:

I know, when I see someone call it PECUSA that the person is to be taken seriously, because they are taking TEC seriously.

I meant, obviously:

I know, when I see someone call it PECUSA that the person is NOT to be taken seriously, because they are NOT taking TEC seriously.

Sorry.

Let's be clear. This is a proposal for aparteit.  When did that ever work? When did that ever bear witness to a common humanity?

And while we're on the subject of names and words, the Anglican Church in the USA calls itself TEC. It is only polite to refer to it as TEC. Calling it PECUSA is a deliberate attempt to put it in its place and ignore its autthority and its integrity. I know, when I see someone call it PECUSA that the person is to be taken seriously, because they are taking TEC seriously.

Whatever the OED says (and I haven't checked) 'fora' is an abomination.

erm, John Martin. My previous post.  IRONY ALERT!!!

This is a pointless thread. There were no moon landings. The sky is held up by pillars at the corners of the earth. There are holes in the bowl of the firmament that the rain comes through. The sun and moon move across the heavens, according to the Lord's command.

The moon landings were a hoax, perpetrated by the heretical Anglicans in the United States to try to make us stop believing in the Bible. Anyone who thinks that men went to the moon is stupid and sinful and might as well believe that partnered homosexuals should be allowed to be ordained.

As David Baker draws our attention to another blog, may I draw people's attention to the responses to Fulcrum on Thinking Angicans?

http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/003905.html#comments