Hat Tip to the Archbishop of Canterbury
My thanks to one of the theology profs at Phillips Theological Seminary, Dr. Morice Brubaker, for tweeting about this story. The plot: Scottish parents that are not believers at taken aback when their child is asked to write a letter to God at the primary school where she attends. They send the letter to several “Communion Heads” and only one answers the six year old’s question, “To God, How did you get invented?” Though not a fan, the Archbishop did a nice job answering the child’s question and the parents, though non-believers, are trusting their daughter to be an explorer. Read a paragraph here and then follow the link to read more.
Six Year Old Writes a Letter to God and the Archbishop of Canterbury Answers
by Damian Thompson | The Telegraph | April 22, 2011There’s a charming article in today’s Times by Alex Renton, a non-believer who sends his six-year-old daughter Lulu to a Scottish church primary school. Her teachers asked her to write the following letter: “To God, How did you get invented?” The Rentons were taken aback: “We had no idea that a state primary affiliated with a church would do quite so much God,” says her father. He could have told Lulu that, in his opinion, there was no God; or he could have pretended that he was a believer. He chose to do neither, instead emailing her letter to the Scottish Episcopal Church (no reply), the Presbyterians (ditto) and the Scottish Catholics (a nice but theologically complex answer). For good measure, he also sent it to “the head of theology of the Anglican Communion, based at Lambeth Palace” – and this was the response: