I Gotta Have Faith

Ordinangst has just finished his holiday reading.  Shunning the temptations offered by the autobiography of Alexander Orloff, founder of Compare the Meerkat dot com,  he plumped instead for a book sent to him by a dear ordained friend in America.   The Future of Faith, written by Harvey Cox,  who is a Professor of Divinity at Harvard, and who Ordinangst figures must know more than he does about Theology.  Which isn't saying much.  He's also very liberal, which Ordinangst isn't currently although he is losing his fundamentalist evangelical edges as the ordination training grinds on.

Now, occasionally Ordinangst picks up a book that knocks his socks off.  Ordinangst freely admits to blubbing his way through William Young's The Shack, discovering his inner mountain man (not a pretty sight) in Eldridge's Wild at Heart and being introduced to the whole idea of sacrament in Timothy Radcliffe's Why Go to Church (he blubbed his way through his one too, much to the embarrassment of Mrs Ordinangst given that (i) the Ordinangsts were poolside in a rather lovely hotel  (sans Ordinangstettes) in Amalfi at the time, and (ii) Timothy is *whispers* a Roman Catholic).

But I digress.  Although Ordinangst isn't nearly brainey enough to pick apart what is, in many ways, an extraordinary book, there aspects of it that strike him as really rather profound.  First, Cox points out that the Christian universe in general is much better at inter-faith dialogue than it is at inter-denominational dialogue.  In other words, we're much better at discussing theological differences with Jews, Hindus and Muslims than we are with each other. Ordinangst thinks this is probably true, and it strikes him as really rather silly.  Turn the microscope up a bit higher and Ordinangst thinks the same could be applied to the CofE.... ++Rowan seems much happier to comment when a Christian is martyred in Pakistan, or to maintain dialogue with archbishops of obscure countries - or even cones - in the Anglican communion than he is to foster and encourage dialogue (and perhaps reconciliation) between the branches of the Church in England who currently seem to be growling at each other or leaving for good.  This can't be a good thing.