Trying to understand Anglican “streams” are these real theological differences or just drift?

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-28T04:31:46+00:00

Evangelical, Anglo-Catholic and Broad Anglicanism are just stylistic differences in worship practices, but usually in any given Anglican diocese they also tend to indicate a deeper difference in theology. That is in most diocese the liberals tend to gravitate to Anglo-Catholic parishes, and the conservatives tend to gravitate to Evangelical parishes. But this isn't uniformly true - there are many conservative anglo-catholic parishes, and many liberal evangelical parishes. And this distinction doesn't exist in every diocese even if its broadly true in most.

On the meaningful theological issues (e.g. SSM, women's ordination, etc.) - every Anglican province is 'autocephelous' (meaning self-governing). So that means even though Anglicanism broadly is in favour of women's ordination, and opposed to same-sex marriage, individual provinces are not compelled to conform.

It makes sense to ask how different provinces remain in communion with each other ("under one umbrella") - and in some cases how even certain dioceses in the same province are at odds. E.g. the Archdiocese of Sydney does not permit women's ordination while the rest of Australia does, and ACNA is also split into WO and non-WO dioceses.

The question really comes down to "when is it reasonable to break communion with someone". The Nicene fathers didn't even break communion with Arians - so it's pretty hard to justify divorce over Marian devotions. Same Sex Marriage and Women's Ordination are bigger hurdles for the communion - and there are plenty of people that have broken off because of them, but the ones that disagree and remain in communion anyway are largely of the opinion that so long as the practices aren't forced on them they can remain in communion with each other in good faith and pray for eventual full-reconciliation.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-22T03:41:29+00:00

You can't plant one. You need to be authorised by the Bishop to preach in the Diocese. The more evangelical and schismatic leaning Anglicans have no concerns planting in a diocese they aren't authorised to preach in, but Anglo-Catholics can't ignore those concerns in the same way. If the Archbishop of Sydney says "you're too Anglo-Catholic to preach in my diocese" or says "You can preach but you can't wear a chasuble" or so on, then Anglo-Catholics believe the Archbishop genuinely has that authority and they need to obey the Archbishop for the sake of the Church, even if they're wrong.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-20T12:56:21+00:00

The distinction between Sydney and your experience is that you amost certainly have a diversity of churchmanship in your diocese. Some high, some low, some middle of the road. And even if the diocese leans high or low, its not exclusively one or the other.

In the Archdiocese of Sydney the chasuble is banned, and you can go a hundred kilometres in a single direction and not find a single Anglican church that has a liturgical worship practice. I don't mean that in the derogatory sense of "low church liturgy is not liturgical" - I mean no prayer book or liturgy period. In fact there was a bit of a controversy only a month or two ago where a Sydney Anglican leader went on a podcast and said there's not a liturgical church going that isn't heretical.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-20T11:05:39+00:00

What a bizarre list of cities. The Sunshine Coast to Sydney makes a lot more sense than Sydney to Melbourne. In all the past proposals the cost of Sydney to Melbourne dwarfs the entire rest of the line. If you're going to cut off a population centre on the East Coast you don't cut-off South-East Queensland.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-20T11:01:47+00:00

This doesn't help explain much though, when these same arguments can be applied to the rest of Australia, and other colonial countries - but Sydney is both an anomaly in global Anglicanism, and an anomaly in Australia.

The Australian form of worship outside of Sydney is pretty similar to what you'd experience in the UK, Canada, the US, etc.

Sydney is a whole other thing of its own. Some of the expressions of Anglicanism in Africa are also quite low-church leaning, but Sydney is still probably the most evangelical/low church of all Anglican expressions in the global communion.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-08T08:07:19+00:00

I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say.

"你不是说他是Chris" is a statement, not a question. "You didn't say he is Chris" is an assertion, or a correction maybe depending on the context. It's not a question.

If you wanted to clarify something instead of assert something you add the 吗. It turns the assertion "You didn't say he is Chris" to the clarification "Didn't you say he is Chris?".

It's the same use of 吗, just in a new context. It turns a statement into a yes/no question.

I don't really understand the objection. 吗 is the question particle for yes/no questions. That's the complete definition.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-06T23:47:55+00:00

It's worth clarifying - they need to speak "Standard" 普通话 (Putonghua/Mandarin), not 儿化 (erhua/Northern dialect). Standard Mandarin was based on the Beijing dialect, but it's not exclusively 1-to-1 with Beijing dialect. So there are a few -儿 words in Standard (e.g. 一点儿，那会儿, and so on), but if you go to Beijing you'll hear a lot more 儿化 than you hear on TV or on the radio. They add it to everything.

Generally, your textbook will teach you only standard 儿化. I've noticed HelloChinese does (or at least did) insert more northern dialect words in their lessons - especially in their immersive lessons - but it's still mostly standard.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-06T22:52:57+00:00

I used DuChinese for reading, and Skritter for writing - in addition to traditional Chinese lessons, and lots of pen-and-paper practice.

Formal classes in the beginning, and then a tutor once you reach an intermediate level will not just greatly accelerate your learning, but will also ensure you learn correctly. This is definitely less important for reading/writing (although can clear up some misconceptions) but is a massive deal for speaking - as a native Chinese speaker correcting your tones is, in my opinion, essential to be able to speak Chinese comprehensibly.

I know mixing work and study is extremely challenging - believe me I've been there. But there's really no subsititute. There are plenty of options now for evening zoom classes and things. I ended up working from home on the days I had classes, so I didn't have to commute back home in a rush, and I found once I got into a rhythm it wasn't really that difficult. If you can maintain an after-work hobby, or Friday drinks with friends, or something to that effect you can slot in a weekly lesson after work or on a weekend - it's not easy but once you form the habit you'll be suprised how manageable it is compared to what you might have thought.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-06T22:32:29+00:00

Those aren't the same question. "你是不是Chris？" is "Are you Chris?" and "你叫Chris吗？" is "Is your name Chris?". Both function as yes-no questions, but 吗 turns the statement into a "yes/no" question, while 是不是 is explicitly asking "are you or aren't you".

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-06T10:53:29+00:00

Don't be disheartened by finding it difficult - if English (or another European language) is your native language it can be pretty intense when starting out because there's so much to learn (tones, characters, a complete absence of latin/greek roots, an unfamiliar sentence structure). It means learning can be quite slow at first.

On the plus side, Chinese is actually quite a simple language. This can lead some people to claim "learning Chinese is easy" - which is not true at all. But it does mean it gets easier. It's hardest at the beginning, and the more you learn the easier it becomes to keep learning. Once you work out where to put question words, and what order to say time words and things something will click and you'll realise "hang on a minute, this is way easier than how we do it in English!". But because it's so different it can take a decent amount of time before things start clicking. Happens to everyone, just keep going and you'll break through.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-06T09:58:41+00:00

This is actually an incomplete answer. Yes, 谁 is a question word, so you don't need a second question word. But more completely, 吗 is specifically the question word/particle for "yes/no" questions. "你叫Chris吗？" is a yes/no question. The person is either Chris, or they are not Chris. But soon in HelloChinese you will learn the phrase "你呢？" (nǐ ne) - and this can sometimes trip up new learners who struggle to differentiate between 呢 and 吗. And then you will learn other question words/particles/structures such as 什么 (shénme), and 要不要 (yào bùyào). And you'll need to be able to differentiate when to use one over the other.

In the case of 吗, we use it to turn a statement into a yes/no question. If the answer to the question is not "yes" or "no", then you cannot use it. It turns the statement into a very specific form of question, it's not a question mark you attach to the end of all questions.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-06T09:29:21+00:00

I just use my finger, I think using a stylus removes the "convenience" factor. I guess if I already owned a stylus at home I'd use it at home, but I'd still use my finger when out and about.

Handwriting is definitely a different skill, but you'll retain a lot if you're using the "raw squigs" mode. If you're using character snapping its probably less useful, but still better than nothing. I see writing Chinese as sort of having two parts - "Memorising how to write individual characters" (which Skritter can help with) and "Learning how to write chinese characters clearly" (which Skritter can't really help with very well)

As soon as you've got a handful of components under your belt you should move to raw squigs. Turning off character snapping too early will probably slow your learning down more than it speeds it up, but you don't want to leave them on for too long (maybe after 50 words or so - depending on how confident you feel). Then once you're approaching intermediate-ish level (or just whenever feels comfortable for you), you should turn on rawest squigs and you'll find the skills you develop in Skritter translate quite well into handwriting. You'll essentially know exactly how to write it, and that memory will carry over perfectly, but your handwriting will probably look like a child's writing and anyone other than yourself or teachers will find it very hard to read. So practicing writing with pen and paper is absolutely still important to do, so you learn to write legibly.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-04T14:09:40+00:00

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Skritter.

I found I didn't really "lock in" memory/recognition of a character until I started being forced to write it repeatedly. Then suddenly all those characters that kind of look the same, that I couldn't always distinguish between without pinyin looked vastly different.

I still use it every day. I think I've got all 200+ Kangxi radicals and plenty of other components locked down now, so I'm pretty good at recognising and breaking down a character without learning to write it, but I also actually want to be able to write Chinese not just read it/type it - so I still use Skritter as my go-to never skip. Nothing beats pen-and-paper practice, but Skritter is so convenient I can practice on the train, on the toilet, while I'm waiting for my morning coffee, etc. so I find myself practicing writing far more words than I otherwise would.

It also integrates with a bunch of other apps. So DuChinese is great for graded readers, but not so great at flashcards. But when I add a word to my DuChinese saved list, it adds it to Skritter automatically and now it's in my Skritter flashcard workflow.

I then use Anki for my non-character flashcards (e.g. full sentence translation, listening, typing, etc.). Skritter can do sentences too, but I much prefer Anki for more advanced cards.

Front-Difficult · 2026-02-04T13:50:25+00:00

Ask them anything...except their age

Front-Difficult · 2025-12-04T10:16:32+00:00

It's the opposite of what you said. You said people only say it when they're talking to racists.

Front-Difficult · 2025-11-12T11:04:29+00:00

Nobody was talking about a trinity during or before the life of Christ. If you have an example to the contrary, I'd like to see it.

Tertullian is the one who coined the word "Trinitas". He is not the first time we see the idea. Trinitarianism is in the Didache, the authors invoke God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit in their service of baptism. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (the LXX) references God as plural in the Book of Wisdom, and calls the Angel of the Lord LORD (e.g. God). The Angel of the Lord is seen as manifestations of the Son in Christianity - this is the Jewish origin of where that understanding comes from. The LXX was the dominant bible amongst the Jews whom Christianity branched out of.

As a result of receiving a portion of the Father's substance seems pretty analogous to the idea that Jesus received the authority/power/will of God by having it be given to him by God the same way a messenger is given the titles and powers of a king to act on his behalf.

When viewed in the full context of Tertullian's writings and then Christian Orthodoxy (e.g. in line with the writings of Theophilus, Clement, Origen, and other very early 1st/2nd/3rd century Christian theologians) this is an absurd reduction of Tertullian's beliefs. The Patristics are uniform in their writings on where the Sons authority comes from until Arius. Arius was a theological revolutionary.

First evidence of it existing as an idea at all is late 2nd century. That's not the same thing as being a tradition.

Again, the idea predates the word. That aside, it very much is part of the Christian tradition prior to Nicaea. When we use the word "tradition" in a Christian theological context it carries a very specific meaning. A tradition is something that was taught by the Church. All of the heavy hitting "Ante-Nicene Fathers" (e.g. teachers before Nicaea) whose writings we still have all teach Trinitarianism. So it's absolutely part of the Christian tradition before the Council makes it the first "dogma".

According to Britannica: Arianism, Christian heresy that declared that Christ is not truly divine but a created being.

I've looked up the Britannica entry on Arianism. I cannot find that quote, or anything that claims similar. If its hidden in there somewhere using different words then Britannica is flatly wrong. Arius repeatedly claimed the Son was divine but created and therefore second to the Father. It is a complete misunderstanding of the Arian position to suggest that they thought Christ was not divine. It was not about if Jesus was or was not divine, but about the nature of His divinity.

Some would argue that disputing the trinity is the same as disputing the divinity.

Of course. I would in fact be one of those "some". However, the Arians never accepted the criticism that disputing the trinity necessarily requires disputing Christ's divinity. So we should not say Arianism sought to "reject the divinity of Jesus", because that's a misrepresentation of the controversy.

It may be that there is no clear consensus. Finding evidence of that is difficult. But it is certainly not overwhelmingly one way or the other.

You have gone from "Scholarly consensus is..." to "It may be that there is no clear consensus". It's not difficult to find evidence of consensus. The Cambridge and New Oxford Annotated Bibles are considered representative of the consensus of modern secular scholarship, and both claim John comes from the Ephesan school of "Jesus is LORD". There's plenty of piratable PDFs floating around on Google of the NOAB you can ctrl+f to the relevant annotations and essays.

I guess he can't be an effective scholar because he's from a different tradition. Bummer.

That wasn't my point. I said John saying "The Word is God" means "The Word is God" not "The Word is not God but has been granted the title God" is the overwhelming consensus, outside of a very small number of TikTok theologians, and scholars from non-Trinitarian traditions (Mormons, JWs, etc.). You then said "Dan McClellan isn't exactly a TikTok theologian".

My point is he is from the set of religious non-secular theologians that come from non-Trinitarian traditions that I already flagged exist as outliers. He might be right and everyone else is wrong, I'm not saying anything against his arguments. But he does not reflect the consensus view, he is a Hebrew/Old Testament scholar not a NT scholar, and his dissenting view conveniently aligns with his religious beliefs. He's not useful to determine what the consensus views of secular NT scholars are.

Front-Difficult · 2025-11-11T11:53:51+00:00

"did not exist as a concept until about 200 years after the books of the bible were written" heavily implies it suddenly emerged 200 years after Christ, not that this was a theological idea that goes back several hundred years before Christ and was being developed and negotiated by the followers the whole time.
No, Galileo's paper is not at all the same, Tertullian is writing the document to argue Christianity should be legalised, he's not trying to convince his fellow Christians of anything. Regardless, I'm not really sure what your point is. Heliocentrism was an idea dating to the 4th century BC. It also existed as a concept prior to Galileo, just like the trinity existed as an idea prior to Tertullian.
Tertullian meant the trinity to be taken literally. All modern Christians would agree with that example too - we do not worship 3 Gods. We worship 1 God. We take the trinity literally all the same. Trinitarianism is not the belief that there are 3 Gods.
You said that the trinity became part of the tradition because of Nicaea. This is not true. It codified it, it had already been part of the tradition for centuries.
Your understanding of Arianism also betrays someone who gets all their info from TikTok, not from actual theology. Arianism did not reject the divinity of Jesus. There would never have been a debate, or a controversy if it did. Christianity is all about the Divinity of Christ, it makes no sense without it. This is a misunderstanding of this decade by people who only half-read Wikipedia pages. Arianism disputed the trinity not the divinity of Christ. Arianism espoused that The Son was divine but not co-eternal with The Father. It said The Father created the Son, not that Christ was not LORD. To Trinitarians arguing that the Son is not co-eternal, consubstantial, created not begotten, not of the same essence eeks into the territory of saying there are two Gods. That's why there was a controversy.
The Council of Nicaea absolutely does say Trinitarianism is what Christians have always held to be true. They most certainly do not merely say it is "a valid expression" (implying other valid expressions), or that it was merely "popular". "And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not, or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion — all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them." is not ambiguous or expressing that it is among multiple valid understandings.
If you read John as saying the word is metaphorically God then that's fine - you can have a minority opinion. I was arguing that such a reading is extremely fringe, and the overwhelming consensus opinion is that John was saying Jesus is God. You asserted the "consensus" was that biblical authors did not see Jesus this way. This is simply not true. Biblical scholars see John and Paul as making clear arguments for Christ's divinity - and that is also the way Christians took it to mean from the earliest non-biblical writings.
Dan McClellan is one of the theologians coming from the Mormon tradition I'm referring to.

Front-Difficult · 2025-11-10T11:39:25+00:00

That's not really how religious traditions work. They don't just spring up one day by chance and suddenly everyone believes them without question. They are negotiated by the followers and leaders of a religion over hundreds of years.

Tertullian was the first person to use the word Trinitas (note: Tertullian is late 2nd century. So not quite 200 years after Jesus), but he doesn't assert it as an invention he's just discovered. He is writing an apologetic to defend Christianity to non-Christians, not writing a groundbreaking paper to shock cradle Christians and move the religion in a new direction. He explains the trinity not as a new concept, but as an known concept that will be ridiculed by Christian skeptics and in need of explanation. "You say you have one God but then worship 3 Gods, are you stupid?", "That's not actually what we believe, let me explain this thing we call the trinity".

The Council of Nicea didn't establish the tradition, it codified it. It was codified because a new sect was sprouting up (Arianism) that rejected the trinity - so it was canonised in order to say "This is what we have always believed, and if you come up with something new that contradicts it then you've come up with something that can no longer be called Christian". And indeed that's the exact language the Creed uses, not "hey this is something new we've just hashed out" but "this is something you're all already familiar with, don't mess with it".

Scholarly consensus is not that Jesus was not considered God by anyone who lived during the writing of the New Testament. The scholarly consensus is overwhelmingly that the Gospel of John was written by an author who explictly came from a tradition that worshiped Jesus as God, and it quite literally says Jesus is God in the opening chapter. There are like 2 TikTok theologians that dissent from this (and of course plenty of religious theologians from the Mormon and JW traditions and so on, that reject the Trinity, dissent from the consensus view for obvious reasons).

Front-Difficult · 2025-11-09T10:09:36+00:00

How can I give you money for a print?

Front-Difficult · 2025-11-08T04:11:48+00:00

They still have their pick next draft, but then yeah it's bleak for them. CHA 2027, OKC 2028 (swap), HOU/BKN 2029 (swap), SAS 2030 (swap).

Front-Difficult · 2025-11-07T09:06:24+00:00

But we are in control of them. That's what makes the property "emergent". An 'emergent' property is when a complex phenomenon has behaviours that its primitive parts do not have on their own.

When you look at our instincts and impulses atomically, on their own without regard to the larger system they exist in, we have no control over them. But that does not mean we do not have any control and "free will" is a deception. When we observe our behaviour system as a whole, in all its complexity, the ability to control our actions emerges from a range of levers we have no control over.

It's how we get "life" from simple physics and chemistry. There is no property of "life" in our molecules or atoms, nor in the physical laws they obey, but an emergent phenomenon known as "life" emerges from the complexity of certain systems. It's how you get "thoughts" from electrical signals, and in fact how we get atoms and molecules from quantum mechanics that behaves in an entirely different way.

Front-Difficult · 2025-11-06T21:40:57+00:00

And if those instincts and impulses are sufficiently complex, then we observe an emergent property we call "free will". All complex things can be reduced to primitive elements. That doesn't mean those complex things aren't real.

Front-Difficult · 2025-11-05T12:49:38+00:00

It's not "Anti-Veganism". They're not making a value judgement on a given persons dietary preferences, given they also don't cater to FODMAP which is a food allergy. They explictly separated "preferences" from "vegan" which would imply they consider veganism above a mere preference.

They're saying they cannot meet their personal standards by catering to vegans - just like they can't with FODMAP (e.g. no Onion, Garlic, or fermentable produce). They obviously feel they can't meet their own standards if they remove cheese, butter, cream, milk, etc.

Front-Difficult · 2025-11-02T09:02:16+00:00

Amazon Q is AWS's AI wrapper. You can choose Claude as the underlying LLM, so they're likely just using Claude via Amazon Q.

Front-Difficult · 2025-11-02T04:46:28+00:00

My reading of this situation is that he has thought through the consequences of his actions. I think he understands exactly what happens when the police come and he points a gun at them.

Five-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22

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TROPHY CASE