Haven’t ranted much on this of late — life’s too short, I guess — but Big Plans Proceed A-pace for the various conservative provinces of the Anglican Communion to formally force an ouster of the Episcopal Church (and, likely, the Church of Canada, and, if the liberals prevail there, the Church of England or anyone else who disagrees with them) from the Communion.
The latest installment — a big soiree of the “Global South” Anglican provinces — though excluding quite a few South American provinces who have historic or other ties to the Episcopal Church and other such Fonts of Evil — in which the post-meeting communique included bits (numbers from the document) like:
- “We plan to be first out the gate with a new ‘Anglican Covenant’ — never mind that the Archbishop of Canterbury said that could take several years — so that we can, on our own initiative, put it forward as the Drop Dead Line in the Ecclesiastical Sand as to what what All True Anglicans Must Believe. Which, of course, includes such definitive church doctrine as ‘homosexuality and homosexuals are icky and eeeeeevil.'” (#7)
- “Oh, and it’s such a shame that the Episcopal Church is ignoring all the ‘minimum conditions’ of the Windsor Report, so we don’t feel honor-bound to go along with any of the Windsor recommendations, either, especially all those parts about not sticking our noses into Episcopal Church business.” (#9)
- “So we welcome all those individuals, parishes, and especially whole dioceses currently stuck with those Bad, Nasssty Churches to come over to our fold, which we’ll use as a basis for pushing forward plans for a new Anglican province in North American that will parallel and obsolete the existing provinces there (i.e., the Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church).” (#8-10)
- “Oh, that new Presiding Bishop-elect of the Episcopal Church? We don’t like her, so we don’t think she should be invited to official Communion events, and if she is, then the folks doing the inviting better let us right-thinking types choose who to invite from the US.” (#10b)
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“And, everyone, be sure and read and reflect on this document (which most of us wrote), which basically says (a) the Windsor report didn’t go far enough in demanding those nasssty Episcipalians repent and toe our line in the future, (b) those nasssty episcopalians should either shape up or get out of here, and (c) if they don’t, we won’t go to the next big Lambeth meeting, so there! Oh, and
(d) we’re not sure we should even be praying for them, either. And, by the way, (e) that all includes that new English civil union law, so if the Church of England doesn’t immediately condemn it in the strongest terms, then they’re just as bad as those nassssty Episcopalians, and we won’t talk with them, either. So, maybe (f) we should just bag Lambeth and hold regular bishops meetings down South of the Equator, anyway, where the hotel rooms are cheaper and we have control of the agenda.” (#14)
How charming.
And I’ll note that though the Province of Tanzania was among those whose name was appended to the communique, we managed this morning to find it in our hearts to pray for that province and its archbishop.
(More observations, thoughts, and commentary)
UPDATE: An interesting, and lengthy, note from one of the Primates (from Southern Africa) who didn’t even know a communique was being put together, let alone this particular one, but whose Province was touted as being a part of it all.
You did here about this right?
We were just talking about that last week. Dave and I were married at All Saints.
Really?
Wow, so it is like one degree of seperation for me. You’ll have to tell me about the church/parish sometime. 🙂
Having just finished a class on nonprofit management, we spoke at length about the IRS rules regarding political activities. Regas made a mistake (possibly ignorantly) that our prof warned us to stay away from. 501c3s are allowed to make statments reagrding public policy issues, but we were warned not to ever use candidate’s names, even when invoking both sides of an issue.
As the IRS website says,
“organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”
Our prof commented that most organizations that get into this trouble (noticed by the IRS) have violated this rule absentmindedly, not realizing that giving equal time to candidates is not enough.
All Saints is, as described in most places, a very large, active, and notably (notoriously, in some circles) liberal Episcopal Church. Lots of community and social activity, which perforce tends to bound into the political at times. It’s not surprising they got in trouble this way; the only question in my mind is whether the IRS is being as diligent regarding churches that swing conservative and are politically active.
It’s a large, very pretty church, nestled right behind Pasadena City Hall. Very inclusive — not just a lot of interdenominational presence, but a fair amount of non-Christian presence, and they do not (or did not during the time we were doing wedding planning) require one to be a baptized Christian in order to come up and receive communion (which didn’t trouble me all that much, and was rather nice for our wedding ceremony).