"I reject your reality and substitute my own."

The title is from one my sons favorite television shows, the cable show Mythbusters. It fairly well describes the attitude of many in pecusa. In their nearly total world of subjectivity things like what the Presiding Bishop recently said about the Anglican crisis that she is helping perpetuate make sense. The PB said that the crisis in Anglicanism is about finer points of theology. You know, highly technical theological issues like the divinity of Jesus the Christ, marriage and human sexuality, whether or not Christians are called by Christ to evangelize the world. You know, minutia like that. Stuff regular Christians can't really understand. Faith matters that don't really matter.

One of the insights of psychology is that when we are in crisis we use one or more coping strategies. Two of them are denial and minimizing threats. These two have been all over the PB's responses to the crisis in Anglicanism.

We see minimization in her finer points statement and also in her recent comment that the worst is over. How can it be that the worst is over when two dioceses have left pecusa, two more (Fort Worth and Quincy) will be voting in November to leave pecusa and other dioceses may vote to do so next year, including Springfield? How can she say that given that the losses of pecusa membership over the last five years have continued unabated? As the Mythbusters say, "I reject your reality and substitute my own." Or, not to put too fine a point on it, I reject reality and substitute my illusion for reality.