Dave Walker's blog. Dave is a freelance cartoonist who draws a weekly 'Guide to the Church' for the Church Times. (
Yes, I know, it should say ‘Presiding Bishop’ rather than ‘Archbishop’. I was trying to save on ink. We live in expensive times you know.
This mildly shoddy cartoon was inspired by this honest (if nothing else) post by Andrew Carey, son of ex-Archbishop George:
We found out in the Church of England that when some evangelicals attacked the appointment of Dr Rowan Williams because of previously held views that this backfired spectacularly on them. The first response of network and AAC leaders, in my view, should be that of welcome, prayer and a desire to meet with her. The rough stuff can come later.
Larry makes a good point in the comments of my previous post, where he mentions ‘relations with the Catholic and Orthodox churches’. Yes, a tricky one. After all, being ecumenical is a terribly good thing to try to do.
I suppose I see it this way. Just suppose there was a denomination who held as a central tenet of their faith the belief that all clergy should spend Tuesday mornings standing on their heads on a Royal Mail postbox preaching at passers by. Implausible I know, but it could happen. Should us Anglicans, in a desire to be ecumenical and build bridges with said denomination insist that our clergy set aside their Tuesday mornings to stand on their heads on a Royal mail postbox and preach in this way? Quite clearly not. It would clash with the mother and toddler group.
I don’t think that the day is ever going to come when all Christians join together with the same logo and a common font on their noticeboards. We are different. We hold different beliefs and have different ways of doing things. If we never changed anything for fear of upsetting everyone else then nothing would ever change. I think each denomination has to do what it honestly believes before God is the right thing to do and hope that when all is said and done we still like each other enough to join up for the occasional ecumenical lunch with pate sandwiches etc.
Update: Welcome to quite a lot of people who have been kindly ushered in to the pews here by the cyber-churchwardens on various blogs today. While you’re here you might enjoy looking at some of my other stuff – how about all of my posts on Anglican goings-on, the main blog page and my church-themed cartoons (You can use these cartoons in church publications if you pay a small licence fee). Thanks for visiting – do come again!
Share this on Facebook: 
If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy these (possibly)
related articles: