InclusiveChurch is campaigning for election to the 2005-9 General Synod of many more clergy and lay members who are committed to celebrating and maintaining the Anglican tradition of inclusion and diversity.
Advice on how to get nominated and elected can be found on the IC website as PDF files:
IC Aims and Objectives for the 2005 General Synod Elections
Advice on making an election address
How to stand for General Synod, advice for Laity
How to stand for Synod – advice for Clergy
How does the single transferable vote system work?
Surely ‘InclusiveChurch’, if they are truly inclusive, should campaign also for the election of those who are not committed to their interpretation of inclusion and diversity?
When left liberals already run the show, why make efforts to elect more? And why get out of bed when it seems that very soon there will be no show left to run?.
So much for your inclusiveness!
Great Googly-Moogly! could we *have* any better examples of a Straw Man Fallacy ?
Some so-called “liberals” can’t really be inclusive because they neglect to include groups who are opposed to inclusiveness. By that definition, a civil rights group in the American South could be charged with not promoting tolerance because they don’t include a White supremacist group at their next function. Sheesh…
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html
I’m with Simeon. ‘Inclusive’ in ‘Inclusive Church’ means, I think, standing with those who (or should that be ‘whom’?) other church members want to exclude unless they are willing to be less than their full human being (and don’t give me that ‘adulterers’ and ‘theives’ nonsense). Goodness knows, there are plenty of people ready and oh, so willing, to represent the ‘exclusive’ group!
I’m in the UK. Where all those churches that exclude gays?
Some people must have a very odd definition of ‘left-liberal’
Oh, and expect some more visitors from the Trogdolyte tendency – as a link to this is included in a thread on ‘Anglican Extreme’ – sorry, ‘Mainstream’ (can’t think why I keep getting that one wrong…)
Simeon
Thanks for the link on your first post to the Straw Man fallacy (although I do wonder if Mark was taking the mickey?. I did notice a few other fallacies listed there eg “Relativist Fallacy”, “Red Herring”, “Special Pleading” which are familiar from many of the current arguments as to who is in/out, right/wrong, true/false.
btw lots of other goodies on your blogspot.
Mike wrote:
“‘Anglican Extreme’ – sorry, ‘Mainstream’…”
ROTFL! that caught me by surprise, almost snorted my morning coffee before I regained control 😉
Chris, thanks. I often find some of the more repetitive postings seen here and elsewhere replete with such fallacious arguments, and it gets my knickers in a twist at times 🙂
While we’re on logical fallacies, there’s one in Mike’s last posting:
Mike’s use of ‘Troglodyte tendency’ contains a logical fallacy. He is implying that something (an attitude or point-of-view) can be bad by virtue of being old.
This is obviously not the case. There are four possibilities:
(1) good and old
(2) good and new
(3) bad and old
(4) bad and new.
“Trogdolyte tendency”
I suppose you mean Troglodyte, Merseymike?
As readers will no doubt know, it is a description given by someone who thinks he knows it all, of someone he/she considers to be reclusive, reactionary, out of date, or brutish.
Hi Simeon, Mike et al The trouble is that “Inclusive Church” is a dishonest name. It is not really significantly more inclusive than any other church group. It just includes AND excludes slightly different sets of people, for slightly different reasons. Most things that IC claims to include are included by other church groups already. The only really novel things are a subset of the lesbian and gay relationships now considered “OK” in liberal society (and by liberal christians). IC still applies the traditional “exclusion”, even to other types of sexual relationship, such as casual, open, polyamory, polygamy, incest etc.… Read more »
Quoth Rodney:
“other church members want to exclude unless they are willing to be less than their full human being”
Excuse me – just to clarify, are you actually saying that unless you are in a sexual relationship you are less than a full human being? That would seem to be the logical outcome of your statement.
I’m not one of the decision makers within Inclusive Church, but Liberal Church sounds fine to me!
Ian’s definition of conservatives sounds good too. I’ll have to remember that one. Such self-awareness!
Hi Mike
Cd you answer the ‘Troglodyte’ point before reverting to rhetoric -thanks!
Ian did it for me:
reclusive, reactionary, out of date, or brutish
A good description of conservative fundamentalism. I’m not sure there’s a great deal we can learn from prehistoric man, and of course I share that view with many fundamentalists, as they don’t believe such a thing ever existed.
“Conservative fundamentalism” Again, terms easily bandied about, usually in a derogatory context, but as often as not quite unfairly. There are, surely, fundamentals in the Christian faith or is it pick and mix, whatever one chooses at the time? And as for conservatism, are there not some values and beliefs that one should conserve? I wonder whether such terminology is helpful, really. It’s like “right” and “left” in politics which by and large is nonsensical. I may be a liberal to one, a conservative to another. And I may inconsistent occasionally, depending on the topic under consideration. Perfection totally eludes… Read more »
I think the internet probably encourages combative comments.
I also think that if we met in, say, an ecumenical situation, where we begin from the position of expecting to have some areas of disagreement but the very enterprise is to try and work on the areas we agree on, it may be easier.
Sharing the same denomination causes most of the angst.
Hi Mike
I didnt ask for a definition of ‘troglodyte’! I asked that you reply to my point that old does not equal bad, whereas your use of this term rested on the assumption that there can be a connection between being old and being bad. Not so!
Bad, not necessarily. Without revision and application, out of date, redundant, antiquated, inevitably.
But why would anyone think there is any connection between truth and being up-to-date. This is nothing more than what CS Lewis called chronological snobbery.
What intrinsic value do you see in being fashionable or up-to-date? And how would you relate this to truth?
I don’t have the same view of ‘truth’ as you, Christiopher, so thats hardly high on my agenda. Comes of being a liberal, you know – rejecting simplistic conservative ideas of ‘truth’
Hi Mike- To be a thinking & honest person at all, one must refuse to be ‘a liberal’, ‘a conservative’, ‘a moderate’ or whatever. Because if one is truly thinking and honest one will almost certainly find oneself coming up with a variety of shades of interpretation of the data, depending on which issue it is that is curerntly being discussed. What are the chances against honestly coming up with a liberal (or conservative) interpretation every simgle time? They must be astronomical. This tends to demnonstrate that those who class themselves as ‘liberals’ or ‘conservatives’ tout simple are ideologues, dogmatistws,… Read more »