In our online debates, we not only fail to cultivate charity and humility, we come to think of them as vices: forms of weakness that compromise our advocacy. And so we go forth to war with one another.

Sometimes our behavior in the “real world” can illuminate the puzzles of online experience.

Consider this little contretemps: John Sentamu, the Anglican Archbishop of York, recently said that it is time for people to stop attacking Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the leader of the Church of England:

It deeply saddens me that there is not only a general disregard for the truth, but a rapacious appetite for “carelessness” compounded by spin, propaganda, and the resort to misleading opinions paraded as fact, regarding a remarkable, gifted, and much-maligned Christian leader. . . . I say, enough is enough. May we all possess a high regard for the truth.

Sentamu’s frustration emerges from several years of the “Anglican wars,” an ongoing conflict that is highly illustrative for people who want to understand why we all cannot get along, especially online

A couple of years ago, I was visiting an Anglican blog, as was then my habit, and came across an article in which a theological conservative — that is, someone on “my side” of the Anglican debate, if (God help us) we must speak in such terms — was accusing Archbishop Williams of something like complete epistemological skepticism, effective unbelief…

I wrote a comment on this post, challenging the critique of Williams and linking to sermons, talks, and essays that demonstrated beyond any doubt that the charge of skepticism was false.

Alan Jacobs is a professor of English at Wheaton College. He writes the Text Patterns

blog.

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