�a cordial divorce�

You may have noticed, just maybe, that I’m not a big fan of liberals.

But something that may surprise you is that I enjoy coming across liberals and leftists even who think and communicate well and don’t rush to toe the party line. I appreciated one or more of my Duke professors for that reason. I’m likewise a big fan of Christopher Hitchens.

I present to you someone who, at least back on August 25th, was one such liberal, Hugo Schwyzer. On that day, he made a very thoughtful post on handling ECUSA divisions even though he’s a liberal Ep*******lian himself.

Most liberal Ep*******lians I’ve come across take a winner-take-all approach. Having thoroughly defeated the conservatives on denomination policies, they want to take the parish property of conservatives who can’t conscientiously stay. Some even give conservatives a good shove out and seek to keep the property as well. Reconciliation, and tolerance, and dialogue and other good liberal words are just that – words that serve as sheep’s clothing over their wolfish attacks on conservatives.

And both liberals and conservatives get a bit contentious in their disagreements (I’m never that way myself.), which often is not the best witness to the world.

Mr. Schwyzer takes a different approach though: instead of all this fighting, why not have a “cordial divorce� or what a conservative Presbyterian has called a “gracious separation.� The money paragraph of his post:

…I see no reason why two independent members of the Anglican Communion, one progressive and one traditionalist, cannot coexist together in the United States. I'd rather have a cordial divorce with some finality than a rancorous, angry, uncivil marriage in which two parties grit their teeth and stay together despite irreconcilable differences.

Amen! (Oh my! Did I just say “amen� to a Lib-er-al??)

Sadly, a more common liberal approach heard nowadays is denigration and denial, as displayed by Bill Countryman: Oh we really aren’t all that divided. And besides those troublemakers are just a few mean-spirited, legalistic, oppressive, theocratic, right-wing Evangelicals. (Note that all those adjectives are found in Countryman’s article.)

*Sigh* Such attitudes are all the more reason to separate, as Mr. Schwyzer suggests.