The election of Bishop Mark Andrus, whose heterosexuality was worthy of headlines on Reuters and in The Los Angeles Times raises an interesting possibility. It may be, that just maybe, our General Convention in Columbus next month will be anti-climactic.
We won’t be voting on the confirmation of a gay bishop. So the media will focus on our response to the Windsor Report. (If the Presiding Bishop announced that he had discovered a cure for cancer, the media would focus on the Windsor Report. In fact, at this point, if Frank Griswold does discover a cure for cancer, it will still be the second thing mentioned about him in his obituary.) A special commission, formed by the PB and Dean George Werner, president of the House of Deputies, has put forth 11 resolutions that embody this response. I think these will be vigorously debated, and perhaps amended. And while I think some people will vote for them with an utter lack of enthusiasm, I think it is at least possible that they will pass more or less as offered.
And then, having gone as far as we can go in good conscience, we will wait and see whether the Archbishop of Canterbury and the leaders of other key provinces in the Anglican Communion think that we have gone far enough.
Having said this, I should add that it is entirely possible that there is so much free-floating anxiety in our Church and in the Communion right now that it will have to attach itself to something, and that some issue or bit of phrasing, currently hiding in plain sight, will become the focal point for a clash of great passion but little inherent significance.