Pat Ashworth, writing in the Church Times last week, points out how the repeated use of the language of crisis in the Anglican Communion is less than helpful. She uses the letter released under the name of Archbishop Akinola a few weeks ago and examines the way parts were edited and rewritten as a springboard for her argument that our language and rhetoric is not terribly helpful right now.
SPIN-doctoring overreached itself — and fell flat on its face — two weeks ago with the publication of a pastoral letter purporting to be from the Archbishop of Nigeria, the Most Revd Peter Akinola, to his flock in Abuja (News, 24 August). Should it matter that the bulk of it was written in the United States from the computer of Bishop Martyn Minns, and that revision, editing, and formatting took place over four days?
I believe it does. After our news story (24 August) we were accused by the Nigerian director of communications of being ‘insulting and racist’. It has nothing to do with race but everything to do with language and politics, in a climate where the word ‘decision’ is now drip-fed into every missive.
Brainwash us often enough with news that the Anglican Communion is on the brink of destruction, and we will all believe it: that is, until proof comes along that schism really is being orchestrated by a knot of people dedicated to keeping their supporters on message.
‘Forced to choose’, ‘moment of decision’, ‘brink of destruction’, ‘the gravity of this moment’ are phrases designed to turn a drama into a crisis, as US conservatives, with help from English friends, seek to sabotage next year’s Lambeth Conference.
Delete this: ‘The journey to unity has been long and agonising and needs to come to an end soon,’ and substitute: ‘It now appears, however, that the journey is coming to an end and the moment of decision is almost upon us.’ In the end, it doesn’t matter who made the change: the result was to ring the alarm bells louder.
Read the rest: Church Times – Pushing Anglicanism to the precipice