After yesterday’s Daily Episcopalian essay by Frank M. Turner, the blog-landscape was buzzing with responses, applauds, critiques, hand-wringing, and much good thought, all in all.
“The parties at risk are the Church of England and the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which may find themselves at the head of a communion synonymous with the agenda of the American right.”
The good that the Archbishop of Canterbury seeks to achieve is the unity of an imagined Anglican Communion that has virtually no existence in reality. In support of that unity he willingly sacrifices the ordination of women, the appointment of women to the episcopate and the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from ordination and the episcopate. For the sake of unity of a communion that does not really exist, he has (perhaps unwittingly) fostered turmoil, dissension, and schism.
Thinking Anglicans reports that the seven Communion Partner bishops who met with the Archbishop of Canterbury last week have issued a statement. Thinking Anglicans notes:
Savi Hensman reflects on the future of Anglican Conservatism, which she says is becoming more radical and more tolerant of violence, especially against Muslims. She says that the habit of attributing evil to an outside group is both easy and hard to break. It is not a great leap from vilifying gays to preaching hatred against Muslims.
The three unhappy priests who couldn’t keep control of the domain name of their own Web site, who offered the Anglican Communion the writings of a veterinarian as an expert on human sexuality, and who mistakenly send their emails to all and sundry are once again drawing on their deep reservoirs of competence to tell the rest of the Anglican Communion how it must run its affairs.
If Rowan Williams decides that the Anglican Communion should become a two-track enterprise and the Episcopal Church’s trains are running on track two, what difference does it make? To whom? Why?
The three-day conference in Nairobi was organized by the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa as part of the church’s efforts to openly discuss issues related to HIV/AIDS in the society.
Seven diocesan bishops of the Episcopal Church are presently at Lambeth Palace for a brief–but, I’m sure, intense–consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury. All seven are members of the Communion Partners, and all seven are signatories to the Anaheim Statement.
Among those killed were the Venerable Joseph Mabior Garang, archdeacon of Wernyol and Deng’s commissary in the new Diocese of Twic East, “who was shot at the altar of the church in Wernyol during a service of Morning Prayer.