Hello everyone, and especially my US and Oz friends. This post has been ruminating for a while as I’ve watched a number of you talking with each other and, frankly, it not going especially well. I expressed it this way to some Americans a few weeks ago…

I’m watching my friends fight and not enjoying it

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s in the same position that I’m in; having friends on both sides of this stoush. For what it’s worth here’s why I’m in this particular location. I grew up in the UK but had the opportunity to study for a year in the US at the University of Illinois. It was at Illinois that God in his kindness brought me from death to life and so I have a particular affection for the US evangelical church. Despite all it’s peculiarities it was the vehicle that God used to save me and you don’t forget things like that. My first steady blogging was done with a small team at Stand Firm as we fought the first decade of the Anglican Wars^TM together. You get to know people pretty well when you’re in the trenches together, you hear what they really believe (not just the caricatures) and you listen as they describe what life in their country is really like (not just the very filtered media versions). It’s this broad cohort of American friends that love Jesus and have known the cost of loving him that are now, from time to time, at loggerheads with Australian friends that I’ve made over the last 20 (and then some) years.

How have we got to this point? Well there’s a presenting issue and then there’s the underlying issue. One of the problems is that if we can’t distinguish between the two then we end up talking past each other. I think there’s a lot of that going on right now, hence this series of posts

So what’s the presenting issue? Well it looks a bit like this (make sure you read through the thread):

For some of my readers this will be familiar, for others they’ll wonder what’s going on. Let me try and summarise (I’ll seek to be as matter of fact as possible – analysis comes in later posts):

Rigney has written a book that some have responded to as an inadequate handling of the topic. Treweek has some record of already being in conversations (well, some of them stayed there) about the topics of marriage, singleness and related matters with Americans. Lots of them haven’t agreed with her and have expressed it strongly. Some of the poor history and style of those engagements spills over into the current discussion.

And here we are; my friends not getting on. If the enemy of your enemy is your friend, then what can can I say to my American and Australian friends about the friends of their friend? I’m going to give it a go in two further posts. The first will be “Dear Australian Friends, here’s what I think you need to know about my American Friends“. The second will be “Dear American Friends, here’s what I think you need to know about my Australian Friends”.

That’s right, a British friend is going to sort the colonies out. Again. What could go wrong? Hang around and let’s find out together.

Image: Grok