The schism is as good as here - the convention was practically designed to make it visible. It refuses to speak of ECUSA, rather calling itself "The Episcopal Church" (because, you know, there are no bishops among Lutherans, Methodists, Catholics, Old Catholics, Lefebvrites, Orthodox, Armenians, Jacobites, Copts...) and calling up every international delegation it could lay its hands on - mostly from such fortresses of Anglicanism as Haiti or the Federated States of Micronesia. They managed to have representatives from 16 states, thus casting themselves no longer as the American branch of the Anglican communion, but as an international communion itself.
Frankly, I would say, bring it on. A schism would clear the air in the international Anglican community, and, but for the dead and rotting albatross of Establishment hanging from the neck of the English Church, it would have happened long ago. Establishment means that the desperate pretence of unity in the Anglican Church must be carried on at all costs; growing Evangelical and orthodox areas must be kept somehow in communion with people who are no better, sometimes worse, than Unitarians; bishops have to be appointed who have the least possible amount of distinctive opinions.
Establishment has to go. Most countries where Christianity is in trouble still have a State Church or, as in Germany, its legal remains. In world communions such as Anglicans and Lutherans, this leads to spineless European bishops appointed by ignorant or atheistic parliaments having to pretend they are the same, with the same right and authority, as African bishops elected for their leadership qualities by missionary communities.
The pressure of international confrontation is slowly driving the Anglican Church of England, very much against its wish, towards confrontation. (The same is happening among the Lutherans.) The clash between Christians and Unitarians, between Akinola and Griswold, is here, and there is nothing they can do but take sides. And there is a tendency towards providing the Communion with Vatican-like international disciplinary powers over bishops and local communities, because one thing that has become clear to almost everyone outside England is that it simply cannot continue to allow separate and incompatible views to be preached in the same churches.
One way or another, good luck to it. Let the Episcopalians have their own Unitarian church, without having to pretend they are anything like Christian any more. Let the Anglican Christians in the US unite in a new province of the Anglican Church. Let the Anglican Church acquire, or rather re-acquire (she had them, until a Liberal Parliament nullified them in the 1850s) instruments of doctrinal unity and authority. And let us clear the air. Of course, I am convinced that the Episcopalians will quickly become irrelevant, but it's their business. And the existence of a clear alternative does a lot of good. I hear funny things coming out of Los Angeles: Cardinal Mahoney, the arch-demon of liturgical and doctrinal extremism, has SIGNED the letter of support to the Marriage Amendment co-signed by many orthodox religious leaders from Christianity, Hebraism and Islam. Ooooh, his gay friends won't like that. I wonder whether this has to do with the presence of a schismatic "Bishop" from somewhere in the fever swamps of "Old Catholic" episcopal ordinations, who is getting plenty of good press from LA's liberal and theologically illiterate media (some of whom are taking him for a real Catholic!) for offering all the things that Mahoney, as long as he is in communion with Rome, simply cannot do - women priests, open gay ordinations, and so on. Open confrontation is so much better and so much more wholesome than creeping unadmitted change.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: "High theology"? Yeah, they must be high.
Date: 2006-06-17 05:38 am (UTC)Frankly, I would say, bring it on. A schism would clear the air in the international Anglican community, and, but for the dead and rotting albatross of Establishment hanging from the neck of the English Church, it would have happened long ago. Establishment means that the desperate pretence of unity in the Anglican Church must be carried on at all costs; growing Evangelical and orthodox areas must be kept somehow in communion with people who are no better, sometimes worse, than Unitarians; bishops have to be appointed who have the least possible amount of distinctive opinions.
Establishment has to go. Most countries where Christianity is in trouble still have a State Church or, as in Germany, its legal remains. In world communions such as Anglicans and Lutherans, this leads to spineless European bishops appointed by ignorant or atheistic parliaments having to pretend they are the same, with the same right and authority, as African bishops elected for their leadership qualities by missionary communities.
The pressure of international confrontation is slowly driving the Anglican Church of England, very much against its wish, towards confrontation. (The same is happening among the Lutherans.) The clash between Christians and Unitarians, between Akinola and Griswold, is here, and there is nothing they can do but take sides. And there is a tendency towards providing the Communion with Vatican-like international disciplinary powers over bishops and local communities, because one thing that has become clear to almost everyone outside England is that it simply cannot continue to allow separate and incompatible views to be preached in the same churches.
One way or another, good luck to it. Let the Episcopalians have their own Unitarian church, without having to pretend they are anything like Christian any more. Let the Anglican Christians in the US unite in a new province of the Anglican Church. Let the Anglican Church acquire, or rather re-acquire (she had them, until a Liberal Parliament nullified them in the 1850s) instruments of doctrinal unity and authority. And let us clear the air. Of course, I am convinced that the Episcopalians will quickly become irrelevant, but it's their business. And the existence of a clear alternative does a lot of good. I hear funny things coming out of Los Angeles: Cardinal Mahoney, the arch-demon of liturgical and doctrinal extremism, has SIGNED the letter of support to the Marriage Amendment co-signed by many orthodox religious leaders from Christianity, Hebraism and Islam. Ooooh, his gay friends won't like that. I wonder whether this has to do with the presence of a schismatic "Bishop" from somewhere in the fever swamps of "Old Catholic" episcopal ordinations, who is getting plenty of good press from LA's liberal and theologically illiterate media (some of whom are taking him for a real Catholic!) for offering all the things that Mahoney, as long as he is in communion with Rome, simply cannot do - women priests, open gay ordinations, and so on. Open confrontation is so much better and so much more wholesome than creeping unadmitted change.