Wednesday, July 29, 2009

"Shall we be puffed up and not rather mourn?"


Just back from retreat, where I finished reading the biography of the first Missionary Bishop to the Dakotas.


Speaking to the Niobrara Convocation in 1908 (the year before he died), Bishop William Hobart Hare said some things that are relevant to the current Anglican angst:


Considering the provocation which has sometimes in the past been given to division; considering the ungenerous and intolerant spirit of the age when most of our divisions took their rise, is it not our sacred duty now to try to be reasonable, considerate and generous toward all Christian people? Green in his history of the English people, says of the spirit which at one time ruled the Church, "The two parties in the Church, the Church party on the one hand and the Nonconformist party on the other, each threw the blame on their opponents; the one reprobated the schismatic temper of the Nonconformists, the other declaimed against the perjury and tyranny of the hierarchy, but neither confessed their own offenses." Shall we go on forever repeating this folly? Shall we be puffed up and not rather mourn?

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