Twice in as many months I have encountered a great illustration of a theological / ecumnenical issue illuminated by a comparison to software. At a conference I attended at CMU Doug Gay from the UK was trying to explain how he liked "high church" liturgical practice but couldn't buy the hierarchical forms of church government. He said he wanted to "unbundle" the software from the Operating System like the EU forced Microsoft to do. He wanted to use a "high church browser on his low church operating system".
Today I read a cool commment by Jane Stranz on her blog Of life, laughter and liturgy . . .
"Do we want cathedral ecumenism (top down, institution driven) or bazaar ecumenism (networked, organic)? The idea for these two terms actually comes from software development. So do you want a microsoft or a linux trinity, word or open office ecumenism? Let's open the theological software bazaar."
I hadn't heard the Cathedral and Bazaar image before but it reflects perfectly my emerging convictions about how ecumenism really works. Our present reality is that people don't care about our denominational affiliations, its the job at hand that gets them excited.
1 comment:
Thanks for this post. Perhaps I should confess and say that the original was as much inspired by Dr B and a lunchtime conversation with colleagues at the WCC. I'm trying to get someone to write about bazaar or cathedral ecumenism for the ecumenical review so let's stay in touch.
what I think is interesting is how software, hardware and operating systems have shifted our metaphors and also help shift the paradigms.anglyr
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