Hallo again to all.
Until the twentieth century, wars were for the most part local and personal. Sometimes the locale was far away from home, as with the Crusades, but the concept of a global war didn't exist until the Great War, later renamed World War I when it happened again. The Second World War was, in truth, much more global than the First, but both were on a scale never before experienced.
The people of France were near the centre of both World Wars. When touring France, one is struck by the ubiquity of the tombs of and memorials to those fallen in the wars. War has for us never felt more personal than while touring the French countryside.
Accepting for a moment the notion that it is possible to recover from such a war, part of the French recovery process included diversionary board games that recast war as parlour sport. The Miro company produced two board games that entranced the postwar French: La Conquête du monde and Diplomatie*. Those games were known in the English-speaking world by the names Risk and Diplomacy. Broadly writ, the goal of both games is to dominate the world, but to do so by negotiation and treachery, rather than by force, whenever possible. We are not devoted players of these games, but we recognize and appreciate their value to those who are.
In reading our favourite Anglican publication recently, we noted a reference to a Scottish Episcopal parody site called 'Taking the Episcopalian' and, admidst the delightful silliness of vestment models, liturgy guides, and trouser albs, we found Risk: Anglican Communion Windsor Report Edition, which states that:
The object [of the game] is to conquer all 44 Anglican Church Provinces on the board, thus preserving the theological integrity of the worldwide Anglican Church.
The game doesn't really exist, of course, and there's no such business as Potting Shed games. We were sufficiently amused by the idea that we thought briefly about offering this game at our Anglicans Online Shop, but reason reined us in when we realized that the copyright owner of the real Risk game would not be amused.
But then we realized that it might not be necessary. This week's rumour that an Anglican leader will soon call for the expulsion of England from the Anglican Communion made us stop and wonder whether we're not just living out the Anglican edition of Risk. The online 'news' services whose vitriolic and dubious writing astound us suddenly make perfect sense—they're not writing about the world in which we pay our bills and fret about being overweight, they are writing about the imaginary world of Anglican Risk. A ringside seat for the game of global domination.
There! We've made a bit more sense out of the world around us, and we feel good about it.
See you next week. Oh, and it's your move; roll the dice.
