[sword-devel] Open Content Creation

[Trevor Jenkins]

On Sat, 3 Feb 2001, Bryan L. Fordham <bfordham@afpress.com> wrote:

> I understand about viewing working on projects like Sword as a ministry, 
> and appreciate that you and others view it that way.

If I'm honest I don't view my involvement (what involvement I hear you all
say) as a ministry. Any participation I have here is because I have chosen
to use Linux and none of the existing Bible reference tools work on this
platform.

> I'm a bit confused about the statement that developers should be 
> doctrinally pure, though.

This is a little hard to swallow. For example, I'm not doctinally pure in
that I do not subscribe to the minutia of Free Software as preached by
Richard Stallman. Whilst I'm Anglican (Church of England) and an
Evangelical (card-carrying member of the Evangelical Alliance) I am also a
Charismatic. For some members of each of those groups my membership of one
of the others makes me impure. That I've also been a (British) Baptist ---
four times ---, a United Reformer --- a mongrel of church government
being a union between the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists ---,
and an Anglicain previously makes my doctrinal understanding various
issues not mainstream.

I can ascribe to a Creed, even after the recent change in Anglican
Litugy. But a doctrinal statement, which for example included the doctrine
of cessationism I could not ascribe to---and neither could many of the
Ante-Nicean Church Fathers either, Ireanus being one.

The only doctrinally pure position I have is that I will not allow any
Windows-based products to be installed on my Linux machines. And anyway
the original Bible program I used was Online Bible for Macintosh. But then
to muddy the waters of pure doctrine: what's my job? I work as a messaging
consultant for a large computer manufacturer providing consultancy on
Microsoft's Exchange product.

Regards, Trevor

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