Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Anglicans Gone Wild

Eastertide

No, really. These dudes are off the freakin' chain.

Rowan Williams announced that he's sent the invitations to Lambeth 2008, the big gathering of diocesan bishops of the Anglican Communion. This will be important because at that conference, all the conservative and liberal bishops are going to have a big cage fight to determine which side gets the Anglican trademark, and whether the center of gravity in the AC is going to be officially Canterbury or Abuja.

I don't care what you say, that's totally what's going to happen.

Williams' spokesman has announced that neither Bishop Robinson of New Hampshire (he's the one married to another dude) nor Minns of CANA (the Convocation of Anglicans in North America) will be invited to the big party - which means +VGR will not have the opportunity to use his patented sleeper hold, and the conservatives will not benefit from Minns' Tai Kwan Do.

The Windsor Report (praise God) asked that the liberals please stop consecrating dudes who are married to other dudes as bishops until this can be talked out a lot more, and also in the meantime would the Global South bishops please stop crossing canonical diocesan boundaries and keep up the pretense at least for a little while longer that TEC on the whole is a Christian church rather than an auxiliary of the Hair Club for Unitarians.

Rowan Williams' action indicates that he's gonna be a Windsor hardliner. Which kicks ass. However, +Akinola of Nigeria has announced through his guy that if +Minns (the American guy) stays home, so will the entire Church of Nigeria. But if +VGR (the guy with the husband) were to not stay home, Nigeria would still stay home. So in effect we have coming out of Nigeria a power play (and how!) that declares, "Rowan Williams does not invite people to Lambeth. Peter Akinola invites people to Lambeth."

Meanwhile, will the liberal bishops of TEC play the same game, refusing to go if +VGR can't go?

Whatever you folks think +Akinola is, he's not as good as all that.

Early linkage here.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

A hilarious and surprisingly succinct summary of the situation! And +Akinola's view of TEC as "an auxiliary of the Hair Club for Unitarians" - mwahh ha ha ha!

SaintSimon said...

This is great. May I plagiarise? (With acknowledgement, of course)

#Debi said...

I hear that Rowan Williams has some mad cage fighting skilz...

Peter said...

I think +Rowan is still trying to have his Anglican cake and eat it too.

True to form, +Rowan is framing what T.E.C. did as a breaking of the bonds of the communion and not a fragrant violation of the moral teachings of Christianity. Consecrating Bishops across provincial lines is not the moral equivilant of consecrating a practicing homosexual.

Kyle said...

Cheers, folks.

Go ahead, Simon.

Anonymous said...

I think that both Robinson and Akinola are poor bishops. Seriously. It's hard for me to even acknowledge that they have any sort of "real" ordination, at all. What exactly makes an ordination "valid" or "in-valid?" I know that this is a question that goes back to your Eucharist question, but I am still curious as to what your thoughts are.

I think that this will be a very proving meeting. I hope that the Episcopal Church in the US will "follow the rules" and allow for a variety of interpretations.

I think that it is ok to consecrate homosexuals to the ministry. I don't see the problem but my Anglican neighbors to the South have a huge problem with it. So, in a spirit of respect AND TOLERANCE, I don't support homosexual ordinations, at least for the time being.

Simple as that.