Anglican Political Commentary

Ordinary Time

My many Anglican readers (you know I like both you guys) have been demanding that I provide my own insightful commentary on recent events in the Communion. So get ready. Mind you, this will be insightful - not necessarily responsible or substantiated.

The American version of Anglicanism, this American province of the world-wide Anglican Communion (now availible in Alaska thanks to WiFi!) used to be called, once upon a time, The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Type "www.dfms.org" and just see what happens if you don't believe me. Well, I think "Missionary" got embarrassing, so they cut off that bit, and sometime in the 70's, they took the "Protestant" bit out. I imagine that the Anglo-Catholics rejoiced, the evangelicals felt kinda nervious, and the larger liberal population felt a little more legitmate while the charismatically-renewed probably didn't notice. So now it's "ECUSA." The problem being that the province encompasses several provinces in US territories as well as Central America, so the "USA" bit is kind of a misnomer. The General Convention decided to call themselves "The Episcopal Church" (or TEC) instead. Of course, we move to an even more generalizing name, which seems to be a very American arrogance to manifest. Many clergy I've known just refer to it as "The Church" anyway, so I think they should just make it official.

Every province/national church in the Anglican Communion has a regional Metropolitan/Primate/Archbishop, but since here in the colonies they like to avoid any notion that your co-religionists might tell you what to do, the American approximation is the "Presiding Bishop," who guards some kind of "forcefield of love," as Frank Griswold likes to call it. Don't ask me to explain this.

The recent Big Development is that the new Archbishop Presiding Heresiarch of TEC (!) is a girl. Like, blatantly a girl. There are two problems with this.

1. Not only is she a lefty, but she's on the left forefront of every policy in the TEC, like same-sex marriages. And maybe divine raisin cake liturgies, who knows? I think I read a commentator call her a Spongian the other day, but since she refers to "Mother Jesus," she does apparently affirm some kind of personal deity, which means she can't be Spongian. Yes, "Mother Jesus." And I'm pretty sure not in the Dame-Julian-nurses-at-the-metaphorical-breast-of-christ-our-mother way, but rather the god-is-androgenous-and-don't-even-ask-me-about-the-trinity kind of way. But I'm not real clear on it; anybody want to speak to that?

2. Some Anglicans don't think women can be priests or bishops. Most of them have Agreed to Disagree. This is an important concept to which we will return later. It's called "Adiaphora," and the left wing of TEC apparently believes it to be some kind of drain cleaner rather than the operating premise of the Windsor Report. The problem is that when a female bishop (or "bishop" if you prefer) starts consecrating other bishops, you've got a bunch of bishops running around who aren't recognized to have valid episcopal orders. Tomorrow I'll talk more about the Windsor Report, That Ridiculous Resolution, and why the whole thing is gonna blow up.

As a disclaimer, I do as a matter of fact think that bishops can be women and that women can be bishops and just maybe even Anglicans can be bishops (but alas not all bishops can be Anglicans). I'm just saying why it's a political problem.

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