As most of you now know, in spite of Stand Firm going down, the TEC House of Bishops joined the House of Deputies overnight in shooting the Anglican Communion yet another finger by officially opening the door to more non-celibate gay bishops.
It turns out the worries of Gene Robinson and the like about the House of Bishops were unfounded. They have neither the backbone nor the wisdom to say no to this madness.
As Robert Munday suggests, the news likely did not brighten ++Rowan William’s morning. But don’t expect His Grace to actually do anything about it. When push comes to shove, he sides with keeping The Episcopal Church fully in the Anglican Communion.
And do not expect The Church of England to recognize The Anglican Church in North America either, even after this. Rowan will obey his Episcopal Church minders and oppose that. And there will not be enough support for ACNA in The Church of England to overcome that. I hope I am wrong about that but expect I am not.
So, yes, the aftermath I expect is the same old same old in the Anglican Communion, only more so. Trendy Lefty TEC dioceses will race each other to get the next gay bishop. Divisions in the Anglican Communion will deepen. The Episcopal Church will remain in and ACNA out and the Global South politely stiff-armed. And Rowan will dither.
Apostasy can be so boring.
3 comments:
Mark,
In my experience such public worrying is a form of fear-mongering. It put pressure on the HOB as did packing the galleries with gays and lesbians and those sympathetic to their cause. Other groupings with quite different aims from the GLBT alliance do the same thing.
On TitusOneNine an Anglo-Catholic poster wrote a lengthy post attacking me and an article I had written, in which I called for a new set of Fundamental Declarations for the ACNA that were not aligned with a particular theological grouping like the present ones. The poster in question voiced the fear that Anglo-Catholics were about to be purged from the ACNA, as he had predicted 9 years before due to his alleged experience with the AMiA.
However, my own knowledge of the AMiA did not support his prognostications of a purge of Anglo-Catholics from the ACNA. The AMiA has special provisions in its Solemn Declaration of Principles that protect the right of Anglo-Catholics in the AMiA to engage in such practices as benediction. The AMiA banned women priests. It adopted two service books that are fairly Catholic in tone. One or more of its bishops are Anglo-Catholic. Its clerical representative on the Governance Task Force is a fairly conservative Anglo-Catholic. The canons of the Province of Rwanda under which the AMiA operates is Catholic in doctrine; its own canonical charter is Catholic in order with a primatial vicar governing the AMiA with the help of a Council of Missionary Bishops: the AMiA has nothing like a synod with clerical and lay members.
A number of the ACNA bishops are Anglo-Catholic. The ACNA constitution and canons favors the Catholic position on a number of key issues. FIFNA has its own jurisdiction. The notion of a purge of Anglo-Catholics from the ACNA was ludicrous.
Nowhere in my article did I say anything that even suggested I advocated a purge of Anglo-Catholics from the ACNA. On the contrary, I called for a new set of Fundamental Declarations that was not aligned with any particular theological group in the ACNA and which made room traditionalist Anglo-Catholics as well as conservative evangelicals in the ACNA. Whether intentionally or not the poster in question was engaging in fear-mongering.
Stand Firm is now operating from its back-up blogsite until the server problem is remedied:
http://standfirmlive.blogspot.com/
Robin,
The Episcopal Church is under the sway of its arrogance, and so has fallen into heresy. The Continuing Anglican Church's particular sin is self-righteousness, and so they tend towards schism.
I do not believe that we, as Christians can ever have anything to do with heretics, except as prophets and evangelists. But the proper approach to schismatics is charity. All of our wounds are tender. A place that should have been a haven has been found to be full of traps. Our mother has turned on her own young.
I think we need to be kind to one another.
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