The Power of Reconciliation by Justin Welby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I was still attending a United Methodist church with my father (which has since become a Global Methodist church after its split from the UMC), I occasionally went to my town's Episcopalian church due to a combination of my estrangement from my dad and my view of the Anglican Communion as liberalized Catholicism, in minor part due to my sexual liberalism and my father's church's growing intolerance towards nonheterosexuality. After obtaining vehicular freedom, I made The Episcopal Church my new denomination and eventually became baptized as a member. To date, my town's Episcopalian church remains one of very few places where I'm fully accepted.

I've mostly known during the past decade that The Episcopal Church was significantly more progressive than other Christian denominations, having Katharine Jefferts Schori as its first female Presiding Bishop and her successor, the outgoing Michael Bruce Curry, as its first African-American one. I had read Curry's Love Is the Way, and while I agreed with its general titular message, I did have some significant disagreements with him, far from theological, but more political in terms of the line between traditional family values (which had burned me throughout my life) and following Man's law, along with the standard belief among most American blacks of nonwhite infallibility.

Two years later, Justin Welby, the incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury and high primate of the Anglican Communion (and therefore my denomination's equivalent of Pope), wrote The Power of Reconciliation, which opens with a story of an ikon (an alternate spelling of icon) present in Stalingrad in December 1942 during the Second World War of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. He notes, very rightfully, that peace is always preferrable to war, and that the former is the maturity of politics and the latter the failure. Welby elaborates that death by violences spreads throughout subsequent human generations, and that historically, ancestry has defined people.

The Archbishop of Canterbury continues by mentioning different ways in which one can find an objective identity, including declarations about oneself and through relationships with others. He indicates that overreach and overspeed can mar reconciliation, since in the former case, goals tend to be unrealistic, and in the latter, peacemaking isn't an overnight process and takes time. Welby notes several obstacles to reconciliation like the need for sacrifice, perceived honor and shame, and neurochemistry due to various stimuli. He indicates various African civil wars, including those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and that different nations across the world have divergent views of historical events.

Welby elaborates on the six Rs of the Coventry model: researching, relating, relieving, risking, reconciling, and resourcing (though I was often confused had to look online to actually determine said specific Rs since they often aren't explicitly stated throughout the book). He then moves from the theoretical to the highly practical, noting the vast challenge of difference that social media has greatly amplified, which he says should create curiosity rather than division. The Archbishop highlights a niche quote from Dr Martin Luther King Jr that Presiding Bishop Curry had mentioned that eleven o'clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America, that Christians tend to go to churches full of people like themselves.

The author briefly highlights the "non-apology," an insincere apology that puts blame on victims for being offended and tend to include "if." From personal experience, I would elaborate upon this that apologies that include "but" or an excuse are non-apologies as well. He mentions the need to "disagree well," which in my case has often been difficult given that others with whom I have clashed in the past, were it in person or online, have tended not to be very civil about various disagreements. Throughout his book, he demonstrates that he is definitely with the times, given his references to various modern films like Miss Congeniality, Django Unchained, and writer J.K. Rowling.

The Archbishop highlights three examples of where reconciliation is needed, the first being climate change that threatens the habitability of major portions of the planet, especially low-lying areas and the Tropics, with individual needs of countries often not considered, along with the need for fair trade, stopping conflicts, and green technology. Second is racial and ethnic differences and divisions, which he notes are often born out of common fiction and where he cleverly weaves in the video games Tetris and Minecraft, the former being "old news" and the latter new. The third is where hatred is frequently considered the greater good, Welby noting that governments need to accommodate and adapt to divided societies.

The author concludes by mentioning that reconciliation requires courage not just from the peacebuilder but more for those caught in conflicts, noting that peace needs to be made with enemies and that the stronger must help the weaker. He ends with warnings of potential cyber and nuclear wars, which I believe could become very real within the next few years. In the end, I enjoyed Archbishop Welby's book, even though I have some disagreements with him (like being an apologist for a certain group whose name rhymes with "fat wives' bladder"). Regardless, it's an excellent philosophical read for any Christian regardless of denomination.

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No digital FireAlpaca art again today, although I've been trying to work on a birthday present for a furry couple I've known since my early days in the fandom.

Here's my collection of AI art for today:

https://sta.sh/21iimmh200ko

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

1. What are your most left-wing and most right-wing opinions? (Yes, you do have to answer both!)

First of all, I really don't care much for the terms "left-wing" and "right-wing" since they make politicians sound like birds of prey or angels of death (and actually I think "far-right" and "far-left" don't sound nearly as bad), and think "leftist" and "rightist" sound far more neutral.

Most leftist? Probably war and the military, since I honestly don't think the world is better off, and never really has been better off, throughout history and modern times, than if countries had just never gone to war, minded their own business, or stole land already inhabited. Trade food, other goods, and technology, but stay out of one another's politics. The military powers of the world including the U.S. I think should collectively disarm, maybe contribute some of their forces as United Nations peacekeepers so that the U.N. can actually have the power to enforce international law if countries are uncooperative or oppressive. I just feel America's armed servicemembers have died more in the name of ideology and whatever necrophilic warmongering crooks have controlled the government rather than genuinely defending the freedom of the American people (which I don't think has ever truly existed in the first place), and there are tons of things we should take care of at home before even thinking of involving ourselves in international affairs.

Most rightist? Probably education in that I strongly support educational alternatives (within and without public education), since public school was largely hell for me (though apathetic parents didn't help in that regard), and while I graduated eighth in my high-school class, and public community and undergraduate college were far more bearable, the job offers didn't exactly roll in with my myriad of certifications and Associate Degrees (most of which I obtained with highest honors), or my Bachelor's Degree (with my ending GPA being 3.93/4.00), and none of my paid jobs earned me remotely enough to move out and live on my own. I'm in a coding bootcamp now, and I've found it vastly superior to formal college education in regards to computer programming, since we've touched on a lot of things we didn't back in college (with most programming classes I had taken only scratching the surface). There was some pressure on me to pursue a Master's, but it really seemed to consist mostly of theoretical crap and not practical skills (there was maybe one class on object-oriented programming, which we've gotten into early on in my bootcamp). My niece and nephew were homeschooled, and they are absolutely brilliant, talented young individuals.