Anglican obsession - Reply

A reply to my post from Amdrew Demack:

Stephen

The Presbyterian lady you talked to had a skewed memory of the numbers ... Two thirds of Presbyterians joined the Uniting Church, one third continued / did not join.

Certainly the leftovers were more conservative than the Presbyterian Church had been previously.

From conversations I've had over the years with ageing radicals such as Bob Griffiths and Noel Preston, it would seem to me that this conservative/liberal issue has been on-going within the protestant church for at least this last half century, and probably longer.

And its true that conservative protestant Christians of any type -- whether UC, Anglican or Baptist -- often feel closer to their conservative brethren in other denominations than they do to the liberals of their own stripe.

But would we all be happier / more united / less likely to squabble if instead of UC, Anglican and Baptist instead we had the Bible-Believing Protestant Church of Australia and the Progressive Protestant Church of Australia?

I don't think so.

Perhaps its human nature (part of our fallen-ness?) to need an "other" to define ourselves against. There would still be squabbling.

I might conclude by quoting one of the recent works of the prophet Paul Simon (found for me by Google, I couldn't do this from memory)

"We celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day
And Buddha found Nirvana along the Lotus Way
About 1500 years ago the messenger Mohammed spoke
And his wisdom like a river flowed
Through hills of gold
Wisdom is old
The Koran is old
The Bible is old
Greatest story ever told

Disagreements?
Work 'em out"


Hilarious.

-- Andrew