Now it is a bit of an overstatement that the Episcopal Church has been suspended from the Anglican Communion for the next three years. But it’s close enough to accurate for general purposes to say that the American branch of the Anglican communion has been suspended from full participation in the gatherings of primates, the national heads of the communion, with a charge to take this time to set their house in order. The disorder they are called to put in order is that the American church has fully embraced its gay and lesbian members.
Now, as I am not a Christian, I really have no horse in this race. Although I have had many Anglican friends over the years, and actually took about one third of my course work while in seminary at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, the Episcopal seminary within the Graduate Theological Union. About the same number of classes, and if I recall correctly, slightly more than I took at my home school the Pacific School of Religion.
This came about because I followed the advice from friends to find a professor I admired and simply take whatever she or he taught. As it happened for me that person was the Reverend Dr Louis Weil, who happened to be a professor of liturgics at CDSP. Between him and a couple of other teachers in that school, I have come to have an abiding affection for the tradition. And like to say from time to time, if it weren’t for that small issue around believing in a God…
For me the Episcopal Church represents the best of the Christian communion, with its commitment to the story as received through both scripture and tradition but at the same time engaged through the fire of reason. Actually I see that as a mark of the Anglican tradition writ large.
Although as this event shows, I’m not in fact correct.
It is all very messy. The conservatives, actually they look more to be reactionaries, are mostly people of color and in former colonies of the British Empire, while the progressives are largely white, there are many agonizing moments for the progressives and some cruel pleasures among reactionaries.
It’s all ugly.
And sad.
While at the moment the American church is the sole body under this suspension, it looks likely that the Canadian church will be following along soon. And as it is highly unlikely the American church, and I expect the shortly to follow the Canadians will either turn the clock back on their gay and lesbian communicants, it seems we are witnessing the first steps in the unraveling of the world Anglican communion.
A sadness.
And a moment of possibility.
What will come of this new freedom is uncertain, most prognostications look to be based upon one’s ideology. Through my lens we might in fact be witnessing the formation of a truly liberal Catholic church.
It could be a healing balm in this world of pain.
And something good that might come out of this sadness…
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