Jason Byassee, writing for the Christian Century, makes a wry observation about the complexity of Anglican fragmentation. Even at the local level, he writes, “it takes a long memory or a flow chart to keep straight all the Episcopal-Anglican divisions and acronyms that have developed in the well-heeled suburbs of DuPage County, just west of Chicago.” Part of the problem is that most people tuning into the situation are under the impression that homosexuality is the most important issue, but Byassee notes other factors:
In fact, the local Anglican story is largely about charismatic leaders coming and going, and congregations growing in their presence or folding in their absence. Among the AMIA folks, the juiciest disagreements have been over the ordination of women rather than the ordination of gays. And the biggest fight to date has been over the relationship between church and state in Rwanda, not in the U.S.
The energy in all these churches comes to a great extent from the many evangelicals who have converted to Anglicanism, a phenomenon outlined some 20 years ago by Robert Webber in Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail. For the most part, evangelicals joined the Episcopal Church out of an appreciation for its liturgy and tradition, not for its generally liberal approach to sexual ethics and scripture. Many of these people have an association with evangelically oriented Wheaton College, where Webber taught for many years.
Recall that, “last fall, All Souls, a parish with some 150 worshipers, pulled off a coup: it announced that it was bringing Paul Rusesabagina, a hero during the Rwandan genocide, to speak” but at the last minute the event was cancelled at the direction of Archbishop Kolini’s direction. Byassee continues:
Much of this complex history [lying behind the Kolini’s disdain for Rusesabagina] was lost on conservative American Anglicans who had fled TEC for AMIA. Sandra Joireman, a professor of international relations at Wheaton College, says of All Souls: “A little church in Wheaton avoided the Scylla at home but not the Charybdis of African ethnic politics.”
The situation is especially ironic because AMIA often uses invocations of the Rwandan genocide to its advantage. Archbishop Kolini even compares TEC with the perpetrators of the genocide, accusing it of engaging in a “spiritual genocide of the truth.” He also says, “Ten years ago, when Rwanda cried out to the world for help, no one answered. So when we heard the American church crying out for help, we decided to answer.” Western guilt is invoked, African heroism is lauded and AMIA can feel good about itself. But the whole narrative depends on a romanticized vision of church and state in the African country.
Read the whole thing here.