Hey, the Binks quotes me!

I'm famous!

The Binks quotes me in the address he didn't end up giving in Halifax because the free speech event in Halifax was canceled.

But he has posted his text and it is well worth the read. And it is also a a primer on the new media and how the truth will get out, and is easier to get out now because of the Internet.

He writes:

That’s the situation I found myself in when I joined the Anglican Church, and began seeking ordination as a priest. A traditional Church increasingly hollowed out, and serving political correctness more than God, or her own best interests. Even the church newspapers became party organs, and dissenting views were stuck into the letters to the editor, or stifled. In the pre-internet era, it was intended that no other than ‘approved news and views’ would get a hearing, fair or otherwise. Welcome to Pravda, the officially expurgated Anglican edition.

So there I was, a frustrated conservative convert in a church which was headed in the wrong direction in many respects– how to get the word out about seeking something better, more true to herself and her own roots in the God’s Word written, and the Creeds, and so more faithful to Christ?

You Can’t Stop The Signal

Jesus says: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

In the recent movie Serenity, one of the characters– an internet-nerd like fellow who’s trying to expose government crimes and cover-ups– says “You can’t stop the signal.” Word will get out, sooner or later.

Christians have always adopted and adapted new technology to their Gospel Message– new-fangled books in Roman times, instead of scrolls; or the printing press; radio and TV, computers, and the internet. In the beginning was the Word, says St. John in his Gospel: but that Word may be passed along, articulated, debated, in many ways. The truth will set you free.

New information technology– what former communist and now writer and blogger David Horowitz calls “the liberating potential of the computer-driven revolution” [2] or, “You can’t stop the signal.”

The Binky Arises

I was a late-comer to computers– having written my last school-paper on one, and only buying one myself when seminary was over. Could this be a tool to pass on news and views? I created my first website in 1994, and figured out e-mail and all that. E-mail: free, and it could go anywhere!

In 1995-6 I proposed a website to the head of the Prayerbook Society of Canada to spread our message of classical Anglican renewal cheaply, and far afield.

So arose “The Binky Doctrine”– the information is the important thing: but it can come in many forms. In the digital era, you can take an article or picture or video, and then send it in an e-mail, or make a webpage for it, or print it in a newsletter or magazine or book, or on a DVD or CD-ROM or in all formats. It makes it easier and cheaper to get the message out, in various forms and formats, depending on your audience. Somebody can print that off, clip & paste it into their newsletter or church bulletin or magazine– and voila! – the information revolution. “You can’t stop the signal.”

Suddenly, you’ve got cheap counter-revolution. Official news-sources cost real money– unlike a website. The web could get the word out despite the church paper or official line, to clergy and people who had little clue about why their church had seemingly gone crazy. Now they could see the bigger picture, that local bullying and weird new ideas were part of wider pattern of re-education and top-down enforcement.

Binky has now shifted his emphasis away from the Anglican Church's internal conflict to the struggle to retain real civil rights in Canada. What a service he provides at Free Canuckistan.