Even the good orthodox Anglicans better hope somebody among them is promoting sex, as the Anglican church doesn't seem to be exactly refilling the increasingly depleted ranks, in either Britain or America. But it seems that ideologues on both left and right find it necessary to fix upon the most arbitrary, meaningless things, like race and sex, to obsess about and attach intransigent values and strictures to.

i agree with you about seminarians [although i think you're a bit too harsh] but i am not quite sure that's what the purple is rebelling against in this particular case. and even though i am sure that whatever they've done, they have not done it well [i'd be very happy to know i'm wrong on this one], i am absolutely thrilled to know that someone has actually taken the initiative to spice it up a little bit. hey, it couldn't be any worse than it was when we were there.

Well, of course I'm being hard on the seminarians. Not all of them are as I describe. But some most definitely are...not that I'm going to name names or anything.

but i am not quite sure that’s what the purple is rebelling against in this particular case.

No, of course not. Which is why I said this:

Okay, that’s not really the reason the student newspaper has sexual content. The real reason is that college students are obsessed by sex—always have been, always will be (which is to say that they’re just like everybody else).

It's come to my attention through a reader e-mail that there's a fairly widespread and very morally dubious practice going on among the seminarians at Sewanee (encouraged by the seminary, no less), but, unfortunately, I don't think it would be appropriate for me to pass along any details. Which is too bad, as it ties in nicely with one of the longstanding themes of this site.

I read said article. It was harmless. It was a tutorial on how to put on a condom. I know you said you do not care much about the content of the article, but there it is. There was no mention of anything explicit...just a how-to.

As one of the few under thirty-somethings at the Seminary (I was the youngest student last year at 23, and sadly I still am as I begin my middler year.) I can say from experience that the problems you address aren't limmited to the Seminary here at Sewanee but is indicative of the more widespread problem facing the Episcopal Church and other Old/mainline denominations, which can be summed up in the statement that the leadership is simply inept. I was both shocked and impressed by the amount of libation when I first arrived at the Seminary. I joke that the most irksome aspect of Sewanee is that it sometimes seems a sort of padded playpen where the natural, negative consequences of students' actions are defrayed. That being said, the information in the Virtuosity article as simply inaccurate, as it often is--David is zealous, sometimes breaking stories before others, and he is certainly entertaining, but he's not the best fact checker and his enthusiasm can lead him to write hyperbolically.

As for the former Dean, I was not a student here when these events transpired, but I have had a good deal of contact with him and believe him to be a good and Godly man. I cannot speak to what did or did not occur, as even the saints can stumble and there have been other factors in play, but the fact that he was exonerated of wrong-doing and originally re-appointed as dean and then chose to step down (remaining as a faculty member)leads me to believe that the unhealthy faculty politics at the seminary played a large role in the whole situation, regardless of the truth or falsehood of the claims. The problems experienced by the School of Theology are really systemic and, to my way of thinking, stem from the odd distribution of authority and system of oversight between the university and seminary as well as a set of faculty that are quite dysfunctional in thier personal interactions. Things have improved during my time here however, and I believe the incoming dean (Bill Stafford formerly of VTS) will improve things further. I realize this comment is rather late, and you may not even read it, but I appreciate your comments (especially about the discouragement of young folks.) Interesting site BTW,
God bless

Thanks for your comment, Jody. As for my comment on the former dean, I may have overstated the case, as, obviously, anybody not directly involved cannot know for sure what may or may not have happened. However, in such cases, perception is often reality, especially when one is friendly with some of the involved parties (not that any commentary was offered directly by that source, but there was pretty clearly some high-grade resentment involved, though to whom it was directed is less than clear, as other, possibly unrelated but certainly more public circumstances were also at play). That being said, I would tend to agree that the very existence of that perception suggests, at least to me, a pretty disturbing level of disfunctionality, regardless of the actual factual content of the perception.