So, I recently received an email from one of the rectors of All Saints Episcopal Church in Long Beach, California detailing the recent goings-on in the Anglican communion, the third largest group of Christians in the world (following Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox). Here’s a snippet:
Beloved members of All Saints’,
This article (click here for full text) just appeared about 7.30 this evening in the online edition of the Daily Telegraph out of London. Here is the money quote (all emphasis mine):
A powerful coalition of conservative Anglican leaders is preparing to create a parallel Church for conservatives in America in defiance of the Archbishop of Canterbury, provoking the biggest split in Anglican history, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
Dr Rowan Williams described the Anglican Church as ‘very vulnerable, very fragile’
According to sources, at least six primates are planning the consecration of a prominent American cleric as a bishop to minister to Americans who have rejected their liberal bishops over the issue of homosexuality.
The move will send shock waves through worldwide Anglicanism and may prove to be a fatal blow to the efforts of Dr Rowan Williams to hold together what he described last month as a “very vulnerable, very fragile” Church.
The initiative is understood to have been co-ordinated by senior African archbishops, including the Primate of Kenya, Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, who represent the core of the so-called Global South group of conservative primates.
But the group has a wider base and is also thought to include several relatively moderate primates from outside Africa.
The size of the group - its leaders represent well over 10 million Anglicans - will alarm Lambeth Palace as it could eventually evolve into a powerful rival Anglican Church.
If you are wondering who those “conservatives in America” are, stop wondering: they is us! The archbishops involved account for over half of the Anglican Communion worldwide. This is, my friends, the end of Anglicanism as we have known it—or perhaps the beginning of Anglicanism as it should have been all along, I don’t know. Much remains to be seen…
Do not stop praying through these days. More to come, I’m sure. Goodnight, and God’s grace.
Around three years ago, All Saints left the Episcopal Church USA in protest of the denomination’s ordinaining homosexually active members to the clergy. In so doing, All Saints came under the jurisdictional oversight of the Anglican province of Uganda in the Diocese of Luweero, i.e. leaving the U.S. branch of the Anglican church to affiliate with the Ugandan. Further, said members joined two associations of like-minded Anglicans in the States and successfully defended their church property from reposession by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. Apparently, a number of people thought the congregation would swifly fold. But it didn’t. In fact, it has only continued to grow, both in numbers and depth of ministry.
I have a lot of friends with different religious beliefs and a variety of sexual orientations; heck, some of my best and oldest friends are LGBTQA and others are staunch advocates of the sole legitimacy of married, heterosexual activity. While I have shared many conversations about sexuality and faith with my friends, I have not tackled the matter publicly online, nor do I expect to do so in the immediate future. Regardless of where one stands on the issues at hand, two things seem noteworthy from this article:
- The “third option” of endlessly debating the legitimacy or illegitimacy of homosexuality probably won’t keep pace with those who have settled the matter for themselves and are moving forward along divergent paths. (The Jesus Metropolitan Community Church and More Light Presbyterians immediately come to my mind as examples of the position opposite that of All Saints.)
- The U.S. is being religiously colonized by Africa, and that’s friggin’ cool.