7.01.2008

Thick as Two Short Planks

I'm reading Robert Prichard's History of the Episcopal Church. (No, it's not assigned reading, yes, I am a very huge dork.) I'm mostly reading it because I want to know how we've gotten to where we are today. Are the things that make me nutty longstanding and systemic, or are they particular to my experience?

As I started reading it thought, I bonked my head onto my desk in embarrassment: America was colonized at the same time as the English Reformation. There was no established Church of England at the time of Virginia's birth! Of course! I knew the dates for both of those things, but somehow never put them together.

This means to me that of course the structure and personality of the two institutions don't mirror each other precisesly. We aren't the inheritors of a longstanding tradition. Both sides of the Atlantic were working the kinks out at the same time, in their own unique ways.

Very exciting discovery. Even if people with half a brain would have put it together ages ago.

3 comments:

  1. no, no you have way more than half a brain. America has a terrible sense of history, and I think it's hard to see all of the historical landscape at one time.

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  2. Fascinating. I remember being told this at one point but would not have recalled it...

    I would love to read that book! heading out to request it through Interlibrary Loan. Isn't it great to find someone who is the same kind of DORK as you?

    thanks! MB

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  3. HEY! I have read P. Gulley's fiction, just not enough of it!

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"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."
-Saint Molly Ivins