By Cecily Asson Sunday, www.newsday.co.tt

With so much competition for the public’s attention, persons at all levels of leadership including the clergy, are often tempted to go overboard in what they say and do, all be it in the full glare of the media, Archbishop of the Province of the West Indies Reverend Dr John WD Holder said yesterday.

Archbishop Holder was at the time addressing a prayer breakfast meeting at the Oasis Garden Terrace, Circular Road, San Fernando which was held to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Friends of the St Paul’s Anglican Church, San Fernando. He said, “We live in the world of the dramatic, where there is so much competition in all areas of life, that some people feel pushed to go overboard, to do and talk nonsense. Whether it is a businessman, the television evangelist, or persons of all levels of leadership, there is competition for the public’s attention.

We live in an environment, I call it the CNN environment where just being mean is not seen as enough.” Archbishop Holder went on to say the temptation to become over dramatic and go overboard can be fuelled “by images of ourselves that we draw from the world”. The modern press, he continued, “can impress upon our mind that leadership at all levels of life is legitmised by the number of times we appear in the local press.”

He then declared: “Absolute nonsense.” The theme of yesterday’s breakfast morning was, “I heard the voice of the Lord saying ‘Whom shall I send. Then said ‘I, Here I am, send me.” Touching on the subject of power, he further warned that it can “allow us to be the very best, and cause us to be the worse.”

Citing the current unrest in Libya, Sudan, Syria and the Ivory Coast, Archbishop Holder said it was “power at its worse.”