Updated with Jeff Sharlet of the Revealer, who writes: Even as these Anglicans create something new — a church actually founded on its rejection of queers, a movement opposed to the marriage of two men growing out of a denomination built on a divorce — they declare themselves part of something very, very old, as if Joshua’s men blew their horns outside Jericho because they foresaw Bishop Gene Robinson several thousand years down the road.
Among the better commentaries we’ve read on yesterday’s meeting of conservative Anglicans in Wheaton are: Jan Nunley’s, Tobias Haller’s and Mark Harris’s.
Mark notes: Of the groups involved [in the proposed province] several are not ecclesial entities – The Anglican Communion Network, Forward in Faith – North America, the Anglican Network of Canada, and the American Anglican Council. Of the remaining only one is a church not related to one of the rogue Provinces with US or Canadian “convocations.”
Expect the British press to start responding to the American media’s overreaction to yesterday’s modest developments in tomorrow’s editions. Ruth Gledhill is first off the mark here. Whether the meeting she discusses is fairly described as an “emergency summit” is open to debate. It has been on the books for awhile, as she acknowledges in the story.