Thursday, March 17, 2005 AD
Chicken dinners down the ages
Keen students of what Chris Johnson calls "the Current Unpleasantness" within Anglicanism will be aware of the "chicken dinners" myth: the slanderous (not to mention racist and patronising) allegation put about by certain "liberal" bishops after the 1998 Lambeth Conference that African bishops' opposition to the homosexual agenda was the result of their having been bankrolled by wealthy Western evangelicals.
It was apparently Barbara Harris, Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts who first suggested they had been "bought with chicken dinners". (+Harris was also reported as saying, at the same conference, "If assholes could fly, this place would be an airport" - how charming, Your Grace).
It turns out, however, that such allegations have a long pedigree. The latest piece on Old Solar is a piece by Sean Mellott on the various runners and riders for the Papal succession. At the start of the article, Mellott describes how Rodrigo Borgia came to be elected Pope Alexander VI:
It was apparently Barbara Harris, Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts who first suggested they had been "bought with chicken dinners". (+Harris was also reported as saying, at the same conference, "If assholes could fly, this place would be an airport" - how charming, Your Grace).
It turns out, however, that such allegations have a long pedigree. The latest piece on Old Solar is a piece by Sean Mellott on the various runners and riders for the Papal succession. At the start of the article, Mellott describes how Rodrigo Borgia came to be elected Pope Alexander VI:
One account has it that Borgia placed the bribes in the electing Cardinals’ evening meal of roast chicken.:-)
