Warning: If you have no interest in Twitter, the well known internet timewasting service, and Christianity, the well known religion, you will find this post dull and an utter irrelevance.

The Twurch of England is the Church of England on Twitter. The bishops, the clergy, and the… hang on… it’s only the bishops and the clergy! The laity (ordinary people) are nowhere to be found. This is an unjust state of affairs which sends out the message that the ordinary people are not as important as the bishops and clergy. Being mildly deeply upset about this I started a ‘Reform the Twurch’ campaign yesterday – you can read all of the tweets on the subject via the hashtag #reformthetwurch. It was great fun and a most creative protest. Proceedings were conducted calmly and peacefully, and from time to time nuns came out and brought us tea.

Of course there are other Anglicans not in the CofE, and other denominations of Christians who are also not a part of this group. I certainly think it would be good to include these people, although I understand that the ‘Twurch of England’ may not be the most appropriate banner under which to gather them. Perhaps there needs to be an ‘Anglican Twits’ (Anglicans who aren’t CofE) group, and one for ‘UK Twistians’ (UK Christians whether they are Anglican or not). I suspect forming a ‘World Christians’ group might be rather more time consuming.

My challenges to Twurch administrators (The Church Moose and Peter O) are as follows:

1) First of all I think you really need to include CofE laity if you are to go on calling it the Twurch of England. It’s OK, there aren’t many of us and we’re declining in number all the time.
2) Secondly, I understand that you may want to restrict membership of the Twurch of England to members of the Church of England. However, if you don’t find a way to include the wider groups of people (Anglicans, UK Christians) in some way I suspect someone else will. There is an opportunity for a creative individual to form the Anglican Twitter community or the Christian Twitter community, and sooner or later someone will do so.

The picture above has nothing to do with this post by the way. I just didn’t have anything else to put in.

Now… stop trying to distract me – I’ve got work to do. My big important project went a bit better yesterday, for which I am thankful.

Posted by Dave at 10:13 am on March 26, 2010 and filed under Anglican bloggers, Anglican goings-on, Blogging, Church, Ecumenical matters, Religion.

9 Comments

Questions have been raised about my appearance on Simon’s Dark Side of the Moon Chaplaincy blog.

Also has anyone ever actually met Dave Walker, in his photos he looks tall and thin…is he? There is a reason for my asking.

I have been trying to work out what these reasons might be. Either the chaplaincy students are planning to knit me a jumper, or the Diocese of Winchester are seeking information about me for a soon-to-be-released photo fit ‘wanted’ poster after my Church Times Blog posts (1,2,3) about the fact they are ceasing to fund Simon’s post. This will mean that unless other initiatives are taken (which they are being) Southampton University will more or less the only university in the UK to be un-pastorally*-cared-for by the Anglicans. Read the whole saga on Simon’s blog and if you want to support his cause join the Facebook group from where news is being posted.

Back to what I look like: So far responses on Simon’s blog suggest that I am “grey-looking and two-dimensional” or, by the Mad Priest: “Dave Walker looks like a geek from a Hollywood teen movie.”

In order to lay these allegations to rest I submit a recent self portrait that proves I am indeed tall and thin:

Whilst I’m here: Thanks for not giving up on this blog. I haven’t been writing it for several reasons. Partly because I’m currently in a continual state of being behind schedule with my diagrams and I’m convinced that the people to whom I owe the work will be continually scanning the internet to see that I’m not frittering my time away. My time therefore needs to be frittered away in other less public ways. There are other reasons too. But I need to remind myself that i do actually quite enjoy writing here, so I will endeavour to post a bit more, starting, I think, with a calendar giveaway in the next day or two.

*Probably not a valid phrase

Posted by Dave at 3:26 pm on December 2, 2009 and filed under Anglican bloggers, Anglican goings-on, Blogging, Cartoons, Church Times blog.

8 Comments

Blogger Maggi Dawn will be interviewing the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in Cambridge this week and is asking for questions from bloggers (and, I’m sure, blog commenters). It looks as if lots of the events are ones you can attend too if you are in the area.

See also:

• Website for the event, ‘A world to believe in’
• maggi dawn: A World to Believe In
• maggi dawn: The Archbishop of York and Jeremiah’s underpants

Update:

• The Archbishop of Canterbury – Archbishops to visit Cambridge

Posted by Dave at 3:23 pm on February 18, 2008 and filed under Anglican bloggers, Blogging, Current events, Religion.

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I’ve been playing around with the ’site to bring Anglican bloggers together in perfect harmony’ idea.

I have to say I liked Joe’s idea in the comments the other day:

It would be quite interesting to have just to have a single page at Anglicanblogs.com which was a tagcloud of current tags on the anglican member blogs.

Unfortunately having spent a bit of time playing around I can’t quite work out how one would do such a thing. One would need a feed containing lots of different blogs for a start. I’ve tried various methods, such as combining feeds on Yahoo ‘Pipes’, but the number of feeds you can combine is limited to 5 and it just doesn’t seem to work very well.

On the Anglicanblogs.com domain I clicked a few buttons in the hosting panel and all of a sudden I have a ‘Joomla’ website. All very good but
(a) I don’t have time to build a website using Joomla, and
(b) Using a content management system like Joomla involves an admin putting the content together, whereas I think the way to go is a site where everyone puts the content together.

So, I followed Richard’s suggestion and made a site on ‘Ning’.

The site is at anglican.ning.com, though at the moment it is invitation only because where you can have a play around with it. I’m not sure whether Ning is the right system to use though, so I’d like a few people to test it for a day or two. Please send me a quick e-mail at dave at cartoonchurch if you’d like to have an invite to test it (or a note in the comments is fine thinking about it). You could also take a look at the Anglimergent site (site for cool Anglicans) to see the kind of things Ning does.

As I see it there are pluses and minuses of using Ning. To start with the negative aspects:

Disadvantages of Ning

• It is another ’social network’ site. Will people who don’t want to join Facebook want to join this one?
• I can’t seem to get rid of a thing that says ‘Dave Walker created this social network on Ning’ on every page complete with my picture. Not what is required.

Advantages of Ning

• As and when the technology becomes available to do some sort of ‘tag cloud’ idea we could include it on the front page using a plugin whathaveyou.
• It means that people can add their own information rather than having a central person compile some sort of ‘directory’.
• Once people have joined the site and added their blog and perhaps joined a geographical group there would be no need for continued involvement in terms of adding friends, joining in with discussions and all that sort of thing. It would work on a ‘blog directory’ level as well as a social network.
• There is a forum area including a thread to recommend other people’s blogs so that it isn’t all about self promotion.
• None of the hassle of making a new site.

I’ve no idea whether this is a good way to go about things. One fairly important thing is that this isn’t a site about me. If we decide to go with it it would be good to have some other people doing the adminning for instance.

It could also be that there is some technical genius out there who could come up with a better way of dong things. If so please do say so fairly soon.

Let me know what you think.

Update: Miffy feels that one more site might be one more site too many. I’m sure others feel that way – feel free to say so.

Posted by Dave at 12:31 pm on January 13, 2008 and filed under Anglican bloggers, Anglican goings-on, Religion.

8 Comments

This is Bishop David Walker, Bishop of Dudley. Writing in last week’s Church Times:

THIS IS the first significant Anglican Communion debate in which bloggers have played a major part. They were particularly in evidence in their responses to Archbishop Rowan’s Advent letter to his fellow Primates, which was hailed by some as a shot across the bows of the theological conservatives, and by others as a capitulation to the right wing.

The challenge, especially once a revised text is issued and subjected to their intense scrutiny, is how to harness the bloggers’ energies and passions for what needs to be a prayerful, reflective, and non-polemical search for the widest degree of consensus. Can they be part of the solution, not just part of the problem?

Posted by Dave at 10:37 am on January 12, 2008 and filed under Anglican bloggers, Anglican goings-on, Religion.

5 Comments

The Anglicans Online have a front page editorial this week about the Anglican Communion, in particular talking about whether there is a danger of it being a bit like Facebook where one chooses whom one wants to be in communion with.

Christian communion is historically reciprocal, deliberate, public, duty-creating, love-impelling, and church-strengthening. As the ground of Christian life it is not something we choose, but something we are given: given from God the Father through God the Son, enlivened by and filled with God the Holy Spirit. It is a profound, ideally eternal relation with people we may never meet or befriend on this side of the veil. It is a far cry from the point-and-click ecclesiastical relationships we watch unfold week by week in Anglicanism.

It uses my cartoon and comes a few days after the formation of the Anglican bloggers Facebook group, but I think these two facts are coincidental.

Mark Harris has responded with ‘PRELUDIUM: Is the Anglican Communion as we know it … a commonweath in cyberspace?‘. He describes me as ‘the Cartoon Church madman Dave Walker’. I can’t really argue.

Some people in the comments at Father Jake’s site asked whether Facebook was the best place for such a group. ‘Maybe yes, and maybe no’ was the gist of my answer:

I wanted to set up a Anglican Bloggers Facebook group with an ‘open to everyone’ philosophy before someone else started one with the same title but only open to those sharing a particular point of view.

In the longer run Facebook may or may not be a good place to have such a group, but it’s a start. Perhaps, as some have suggested here, some other sort of blog or aggregator might work better in the long term.

In a fit of enthusiasm I went out and registered AnglicanBlogs.com thinking that perhaps a new domain name would sort out all our troubles. I’m forever doing this. I have a list of domain names to remind me of all the projects that never really quite worked or in many cases, saw the light of day.

Thus far it has been most encouraging to see over 274 people join the group from all sides of the central aisle, though perhaps a greater proportion from the liberal side (ie the one where using the kneelers is optional). I’m aware that one or two new connections have been made as a result.

There are other lists of Anglican blogs, but none as far as I am aware covering the whole Anglican Communion. For the Episcopalians there’s a blogging Episcopalians webring, but the links on Anglicans Online to blog lists are now rather moth-eared and overgrown. There is the Technorati Anglican blog list of course, but it doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously for reasons that become obvious as soon as you look at it.

If you have ideas about where we go from here in terms of uniting the entire Anglican Communion using blogging and a hastily purchased domain name then do post them here or on the Facebook wall. I feel sure that cake needs to be involved somehow, but I can’t quite work out how.

Thanks by the way for the continued comments on my ‘ideas appeal’ posts. I print them off and read them in the library or a Basildon coffee shop. The cartoon relating to ‘excuses for absenteeism’ is now complete, the one relating to the ‘things carried by clergy’ is very nearly there but the ‘Fresh expressions’ one will get there eventually. I’m trying to work out a way to reward contributors in a very real way (but not too real). Seriously though – I do appreciate it.

Posted by Dave at 2:01 pm on January 9, 2008 and filed under Anglican bloggers, Anglican goings-on, Religion.

6 Comments

I have decided that whilst procrastinating from my main task, that of producing one good diagram a day, I will attempt to mend the rift in the Anglican Communion using various methods.

Part one is the formation of a Facebook group entitled ‘Anglican Bloggers‘ which is for all bloggers and blog commenters with an interest in Anglican things.

A group for people who blog about Anglican goings-on. Also the people who comment on the blogs about Anglican goings-on. Also Anglicans who blog, but not about Anglican goings-on. Also those who have no idea what is going on, but want to join in.

This is a group for those who blog from the right hand pews, those who blog from the left hand pews and those who find themselves blogging in the central aisle where they might be struck down by a hymnbook from either side or be run down by the procession. Everyone is welcome.

I hadn’t planned this to be a place for in-depth debate, as there are lots of those out there anyway. But it might become a place to connect with the people behind the websites. Who knows, we might discover we’re all human after all. And where the bloggers lead the bishops follow. Or something.

If you know any Anglican bloggers and commenters then please let them know. There is a thread where you can add your own site and hopefully other discussions will develop. If you’re not on Facebook it is quite easy to sign up, but if you don’t want to do so for idealogical reasons I respect that.

By the way I have drawn the people in the cartoon wearing cassocks as I am assuming we all wear cassocks when blogging and commenting. In fact I tend to wear a dressing gown, which is a short cassock made from towelling material.

OK, let’s send some invitations to some distant (and not so distant) pews. I know all of us Anglican bloggers check our referrers on an hourly basis. To the following – you’d all be most welcome to join us:

• The Stand Firmists
• Kendall at TitusOneNine
• Father Jake
• The Mad Priest
• Mark Harris
• Peter Ould
• BabyBlue
• Mark the Newbie Anglican
• Susan Russell
• Chris Sugden
• The Daily Episcopalians
• Andrew Brown
• The Lead bloggers
• Bishop David
• epiScope

This is by no stretch of the imagination anywhere remotely near an exhaustive list, but I had to start somewhere. Simon of the Thinking Anglicans has already joined, as has Bishop Alan and a good number of others. Well, we’re into double figures.

Please feel free to use the above cartoon on your own site. Just copy and paste this handy code:


<img src="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/cb/anglican-bloggers.gif" alt="cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com" />
<p>Cartoon by <a href="http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/">Dave Walker</a>. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at <a href="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/">We Blog Cartoons</a>.</p>


Update:
I’ve posted a couple of responses from a few of the blogs on theFacebook group. I particularly appreciated the post from Mark Harris: PRELUDIUM: The Fulfillment of Predictions 1. Also Fr Jake Father Jake Stops the World: All You Need is Love? and from the other side it will be interesting to see the comments on Stand Firm – I Thought I Felt a Disturbance in the Force.

Posted by Dave at 9:19 am on January 4, 2008 and filed under Anglican bloggers, Anglican goings-on, Blogging, Cartoons, Church, Religion.

10 Comments