Wednesday, July 16, 2008

"Importance" or "Impotence" ... that is the question!

From today's Telegraph, the daily dose of "News of Fresh Disaster for the Anglican Communion" is summed up in a piece entitled:

Gay clergy split is 'most perilous crisis'
.
in Church's history

Really? More perilous than Protestant v. Catholic???? Hmmm ... have to think about that one for awhile!

Anyway, here's the quote that got my attention from our friend Chris Sugden of Anglican Mainstream fame:

"If nothing is done at Lambeth it will underline the importance of the Gafcon movement and declaration in securing the future of orthodox Christian within the Anglican church," he said.

I would make precisely the opposite argument. (And, for the record, by "nothing is done" he's referring to Ephraim Radner's "The Anglican Sky is Falling Open Letter to Lambeth" insisting that the bishops MUST DO SOMETHING to stop the schism that the "traditionalists" are insisting is inevitable by throwing the American Church in general and LGBT Anglicans in specific under the Lambeth Bus.)

Anyway, back to my argument.

If "nothing is done" -- if the center holds and Anglicans agree to disagree and muddle along together following Jesus and breaking bread and feeding the hungry and ministering to the least of these in spite of their differences, then it will underline the impotence of the Gafcon movement in its failed effort to blackmail the Communion into bigotry and to throw the Archbishop of Canterbury out with the bathwater.

And that doesn't exactly sound like "nothing" to me.

If sounds like a very significant something!

1 comment:

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG said...

Funny thing is that the folks who think they are the most gravitational are the ones who are the most centrifugal: if it doesn't go their way it will fall apart (i.e., they will leave).